The young man took it with a sense of complete bewilderment. He was about to tear the seal when the gentleman who had just introduced himself with such light-hearted friendliness tapped him on the shoulder.
‘Suppose you go and sit down,’ he observed. ‘I’ll bring yer a spot o’ coffee and a couple o’ Zepps in a smoke screen. I always get peckish about this time o’ night meself.’
‘I’ve only got a shilling –’ Gyrth began awkwardly.
Mr Lugg raised his eyebrows.
‘A bob?’ he said. ‘Where d’you think you’re dining? The Cheshire Cheese? You sit down, my lad. I’ll do you proud for a tanner. Then you’ll ’ave yer “visible means” and tuppence to spare for emergencies.’
Gyrth did as he was told. He edged on to one of the greasy benches and sat down before a table neatly covered with a clean newspaper bill. He tore at the thick envelope with clumsy fingers. The smell of the place had reawakened his hunger, and his head was aching violently.
Three objects fell out upon the table; two pound notes and an engraved correspondence card. He stared at the card in stupefaction:
Mr Albert Campion
At Home
– and underneath, in the now familiar square handwriting:
Any evening after twelve.
Improving Conversation.
Beer, Light Wines, and Little Pink Cakes.
Do come.
The address was engraved:
17, Bottle Street, W1
(Entrance on left by Police Station).
Scribbled on the back were the words: ‘Please forgive crude temporary loan. Come along as soon as you can. It’s urgent. Take care. A.C.’
Val Gyrth turned the card over and over.
The whole episode was becoming fantastic. There was a faintly nonsensical, Alice-through-the-Looking-Glass air about it all, and it did just cross his mind that he might have been involved in a street accident and the adventure be the result of a merciful anaesthetic.
He was still examining the extraordinary message when the gloomy but also slightly fantastic Mr Lugg appeared with what was evidently his personal idea of a banquet. Gyrth ate what was set before him with a growing sense of gratitude and reality. When he had finished he looked up at the man who was still standing beside him.
‘I say,’ he said, ‘have you ever heard of a Mr Albert Campion?’
The man’s small eyes regarded him solemnly. ‘Sounds familiar,’ he said. ‘I can’t say as I place ’im, though.’ There was a stubborn blankness in his face which told the boy that further questioning would be useless. Once again Gyrth took up the card and the two bank-notes.
‘How do you know,’ he said suddenly, ‘that I am the man to receive this letter?’
Mr Lugg looked over his shoulder at the second envelope. ‘That’s yer name, ain’t it?’ he said. ‘It’s the name inside yer suit, any’ow. You showed me.’
‘Yes, I know,’ said Val patiently. ‘But how do you know that I am the Percival St John Wykes Gyrth –?’
‘Gawd! It don’t stand for all that, do it?’ said Mr Lugg, impressed. ‘That answers yer own question, my lad. There ain’t two mothers ’oo’d saddle a brat with that lot. That’s your invitation ticket all right. Don’t you worry. I should ’op it – it’s gettin’ late.’
Gyrth considered the card again. It was mad, of course. And yet he had come so far that it seemed illogical not to go on. As though to clinch the matter with himself he paid for his food out of his new-found wealth, and after tipping his host prodigally he bade the man good-night and walked out of the deserted eating-house.
It was not until he was outside the door and standing on the pavement that the problem of transportation occurred to him. It was a good three miles across the city to Piccadilly, and although his hunger was sated he was still excessively tired. To make the situation more uncomfortable it was very late and the rain had come in a sullen downpour.
While he stood hesitating, the sound of wheels came softly behind him.
‘Taxi, sir?’
Gyrth turned thankfully, gave the man the address on the card, and climbed into the warm leather depths of the cab.
As he sank back among the cushions the old feeling of well-being stole over him. The cab was speeding over the glistening roads along which he had trudged so wearily less than an hour before. For some minutes he reflected upon the extraordinary invitation he had accepted so unquestioningly. The ridiculous card read like a hoax, of course, but two pounds are not a joke to a starving man, and since he had nothing to lose he saw no reason why he should not investigate it. Besides, he was curious.
He took the card out of his pocket and bent forward to read it by the light from the meter lamp. He could just make out the scribbled message: ‘Come along as soon as you can. It’s urgent. Take care.’
The last two words puzzled him. In the circumstances they seemed so ridiculous that he almost laughed.
It was at that precise moment that the cab turned to the right in Gray’s Inn Road and he caught a glimpse of a quiet tree-lined Bloomsbury square. Then, and not until then, did it dawn upon him with a sudden throb and quickening of his pulse that the chance of picking up a taxi accidentally at three o’clock in the morning in Wembley Road, Clerkenwell was one in a million, and secondly, that the likelihood of any ordinary cabman mistaking him in his present costume for a potential fare was nothing short of an absurdity. He bent forward and ran his hand along the doors. There were no handles. The windows too appeared to be locked.
Considerably startled, but almost ashamed of himself for suspecting a danger for which he was hardly eligible, he rapped vigorously on the window behind the driver.
Even as Gyrth watched him, the man bent over his wheel and trod heavily on the accelerator.
CHAPTER 2
Little Pink Cakes
—
VAL sat forward in the half-darkness and peered out. The old cab was, he guessed, travelling all out at about thirty-five miles an hour. The streets were rain-swept and deserted and he recognized that he was being carried directly out of his way.
On the face of it he was being kidnapped, but this idea was so ridiculous in his present condition that he was loth to accept it. Deciding that the driver must be drunk or deaf, he thundered again on the glass and tried shouting down the speaking tube.
‘I want Bottle Street – off Piccadilly.’
This time he had no doubt that his driver heard him, for the man jerked his head in a negative fashion and the cab rocked and swayed dangerously. Val Gyrth had to accept the situation, absurd though it might be. He was a prisoner being borne precipitately to an unknown destination.
During the past eighteen months he had discovered himself in many unpleasant predicaments, but never one that called for such immediate action. At any other time he might have hesitated until it was too late, but tonight the cumulative effects of starvation and weariness had produced in him a dull recklessness, and the mood which had permitted him to follow such a fantastic will-o’-the-wisp as his name on a discarded envelope, and later to accept the hardly conventional invitation of the mysterious Mr Campion, was still upon him. Moreover, the kindly ministrations of Mr Lugg had revived his strength and with it his temper.
At that moment, hunched up inside the cab, he was a dangerous person. His hands were knotted together, and the muscles of his jaw contracted.
The moment the idea came into his head he put it into execution.
He bent down and removed the heavy shoe with the thin sole, from which the lace had long since disappeared. With this formidable weapon tightly gripped in his hand, he crouched in the body of the cab, holding himself steady by the flower bracket above the spare seats. He was still prodigiously strong, and put all he knew into the blow. His arm crashed down like a machine hammer, smashing through the plate glass and down on to the driver’s skull.
Instantly Gyrth dropped on to the mat, curling himself up, his arms covering his head. The driver’s thick cap had protec
ted him considerably, but the attack was so sudden that he lost control of his wheel. The cab skidded violently across the greasy road, mounted the pavement and smashed sickeningly into a stone balustrade.
The impact was terrific: the car bounded off the stone work, swayed for an instant and finally crashed over on to its side.
Gyrth was hurled into the worn hood of the cab, which tore beneath his weight. He was conscious of warm blood trickling down his face from a cut across his forehead, and one of his shoulders was wrenched, but he had been prepared for the trouble and was not seriously injured. He was still angry, still savage. He fought his way out through the torn fabric on to the pavement, and turned for an instant to survey the scene.
His captor lay hidden beneath the mass of wreckage and made no sound. But the street was no longer deserted. Windows were opening and from both ends of the road came the sound of voices and hurrying footsteps.
Gyrth was in no mood to stop to answer questions. He wiped the blood from his face with his coat-sleeve and was relieved to find that the damage was less messy than he had feared. He slipped on the shoe, which he still gripped, and vanished like a shadow up a side street.
He finished the rest of his journey on foot.
He went to the address in Bottle Street largely out of curiosity, but principally, perhaps, because he had nowhere else to go. He chose the narrow dark ways, cutting through the older part of Holborn and the redolent alleys of Soho.
Now, for the first time for days, he realized that he was free from that curious feeling of oppression which had vaguely puzzled him. There was no one in the street behind him as he turned from dark corner to lighted thoroughfare and came at last to the cul-de-sac off Piccadilly which is Bottle Street.
The single blue lamp of the Police Station was hardly inviting, but the door of Number Seventeen, immediately upon the left, stood ajar. He pushed it open gingerly.
He was well-nigh exhausted, however, and his shreds of caution had vanished. Consoling himself with the thought that nothing could be worse than his present predicament, he climbed painfully up the wooden steps. After the first landing there was a light and the stairs were carpeted, and he came at last to a full stop before a handsome linenfold oak door. A small brass plate bore the simple legend, ‘Mr Albert Campion. The Goods Dept.’
There was also a very fine Florentine knocker, which, however, he did not have occasion to use, for the door opened and an entirely unexpected figure appeared in the opening.
A tall thin young man with a pale inoffensive face, and vague eyes behind enormous horn-rimmed spectacles smiled out at him with engaging friendliness. He was carefully, not to say fastidiously, dressed in evening clothes, but the correctness of his appearance was somewhat marred by the fact that in his hand he held a string to which was attached a child’s balloon of a particularly vituperant pink.
He seemed to become aware of this incongruous attachment as soon as he saw his visitor, for he made several unsuccessful attempts to hide it behind his back. He held out his hand.
‘Doctor Livingstone, I presume?’ he said in a well-bred, slightly high-pitched voice.
Considerably startled, Gyrth put out his hand. ‘I don’t know who you are,’ he began, ‘but I’m Val Gyrth and I’m looking for a man who calls himself Albert Campion.’
‘That’s all right,’ said the stranger releasing the balloon, which floated up to the ceiling, with the air of one giving up a tiresome problem. ‘None genuine without my face on the wrapper. This is me – my door – my balloon. Please come in and have a drink. You’re rather late – I was afraid you weren’t coming,’ he went on, escorting his visitor across a narrow hall into a small but exceedingly comfortable sitting-room, furnished and decorated in a curious and original fashion. There were several odd trophies on the walls, and above the mantelpiece, between a Rosenberg drypoint and what looked like a page from an original ‘Dance of Death’, was a particularly curious group composed of a knuckle-duster surmounted by a Scotland Yard Rogues’ Gallery portrait of a well-known character, neatly framed and affectionately autographed. A large key of a singular pattern completed the tableau.
Val Gyrth sank down into the easy chair his host set for him. This peculiar end to his night’s adventure, which in itself had been astonishing enough, had left him momentarily stupefied. He accepted the brandy-and-soda which the pale young man thrust into his hands and began to sip it without question.
It was at this point that Mr Campion appeared to notice the cut on his visitor’s forehead. His concern was immediate.
‘So you had a spot of trouble getting here?’ he said. ‘I do hope they didn’t play rough.’
Val put down his glass, and sitting forward in his chair looked up into his host’s face.
‘Look here,’ he said, ‘I haven’t the least idea who you are, and this night’s business seems like a fairy tale. I find an envelope addressed to me, open, in the middle of Ebury Square. Out of crazy curiosity I follow it up. At Kemp’s eating-house in Clerkenwell I find a letter waiting for me from you, with two pounds in it and an extraordinary invitation card. I get in a taxi to come here and the man tries to shanghai me. I scramble out of that mess with considerable damage to myself, and more to the driver, and when I get here I find you apparently quite au fait with my affairs and fooling about with a balloon. I may be mad – I don’t know.’
Mr Campion looked hurt. ‘I’m sorry about the balloon,’ he said. ‘I’d just come back from a gala at the Athenaeum, when Lugg phoned to say you were coming. He’s out tonight, so I had to let you in myself. I don’t see that you can grumble about that. The taxi sounds bad. That’s why you were late, I suppose?’
‘That’s all right,’ said Val, who was still ruffled. ‘But it must be obvious to you that I want an explanation, and you know very well that you owe me one.’
It was then that Mr Campion stepped sideways so that the light from the reading-lamp on the table behind him shone directly upon his visitor’s face. Then he cleared his throat and spoke with a curious deliberation quite different from his previous manner.
‘I see you take the long road, Mr Gyrth,’ he said quietly.
Val raised his eyes questioningly to his host’s face. It was the second time that night that the simple remark had been made to him, and each time there had been this same curious underlying question in the words.
He stared at his host blankly, but the pale young man’s slightly vacuous face wore no expression whatsoever, and his eyes were obscured behind the heavy spectacles. He did not stir, but stood there clearly waiting a reply, and in that instant the younger man caught a glimpse of waters running too deep for him to fathom.
CHAPTER 3
The Fairy Tale
—
VAL GYRTH rose to his feet.
‘The man at Kemp’s said that to me,’ he said. ‘I don’t know what it means – since it’s obvious that it must mean something. What do you expect me to say?’
Mr Campion’s manner changed instantly. He became affable and charming. ‘Do sit down,’ he said. ‘I owe you an apology. Only, you see, I’m not the only person who’s interested in you – I shall have to explain my interest, by the way. But if my rival firm got hold of you first –’
‘Well?’ said Val.
‘Well,’ said Mr Campion, ‘you might have understood about the Long Road. However, now that we can talk, suppose I unbosom myself – unless you’d like to try a blob of iodine on that scalp of yours?’
Val hesitated, and his host took his arm. ‘A spot of warm water and some nice lint out of my Militia Red Cross Outfit will settle that for you,’ he said. ‘No one can be really absorbed by a good story if he’s got gore trickling into his eyes. Come on.’
After ten minutes’ first-aid in the bathroom they returned once more to the study, and Mr Campion refilled his guest’s glass. ‘In the first place,’ he said, ‘I think you ought to see this page out of last week’s Society Illustrated. It concerns you in a way.’
> He walked across the room and unlocking a drawer in a Queen Anne bureau, returned almost immediately with a copy of the well-known weekly. He brushed over the pages and folded the magazine at a large full-page portrait of a rather foolish-looking woman of fifty odd, clad in a modern adaptation of a medieval gown, and holding in her clasped hand a chalice of arresting design. A clever photographer had succeeded in directing the eye of the beholder away from the imperfections of the sitter by focusing his attention upon the astoundingly beautiful object she held.
About eighteen inches high, it was massive in design, and consisted of a polished gold cup upon a jewelled pedestal. Beneath the portrait there were a few lines of letterpress.
‘A Lovely Priestess,’ ran the headline, and underneath:
‘Lady Pethwick, who before her marriage to the late Sir Lionel Pethwick was, of course, Miss Diana Gyrth, is the sister of Col. Sir Percival Gyrth, Bt, owner of the historic “Tower” at Sanctuary in Suffolk, and keeper of the ageless Gyrth Chalice. Lady Pethwick is here seen with the precious relic, which is said to date from before the Conquest. She is also the proud possessor of the honorary title of “Maid of the Cuppe”. The Gyrths hold the custody of the Chalice as a sacred family charge. This is the first time it has ever been photographed. Our readers may remember that it is of the Gyrth Tower that the famous story of the Secret Room is told.’
Val Gyrth took the paper with casual curiosity, but the moment he caught sight of the photograph he sprang to his feet and stood towering in Mr Campion’s small room, his face crimson and his intensely blue eyes narrowed and appalled. As he tried to read the inscription his hand shook so violently that he was forced to set the paper on the table and decipher it from there. When he had finished he straightened himself and faced his host. A new dignity seemed to have enveloped him in spite of his ragged clothes and generally unkempt appearance.
‘Of course,’ he said gravely, ‘I quite understand. You’re doing this for my father. I ought to go home.’
Look to the Lady Page 2
