‘Well?’ said Tony. His face was pale; there were lines carven into its leanness which had not been there half an hour before. The pupils of his grey eyes had contracted to black pinheads.
Under the stare Captain James lost his smile and shifted uneasily, uncrossing his legs.
‘Do you expect,’ said Tony, ‘that I shall take any notice of this?’
‘I don’t,’ said Captain James, ‘expect. I know you will, because you got to! And that, my young cock sparrer, is that!’
Tony did not move. He still looked at Captain James. And Captain James pushed his chair back half an inch. And Captain James seemed to be bracing his body to meet an attack. The eyes of Captain James seemed smaller than ever and extremely wary. Captain James was a person of experience and knew, as soon as any man, when physical trouble was in the air.
‘I don’t,’ repeated Captain James, ‘expect anything. I know you’ll take notice. You can’t help yourself, son.’
Tony put out a hand which tapped upon the little pile of papers before him. His eyes never left the eyes of Captain James. He said:
‘I know you’re foul but I don’t think you’re a fool. I think I must be correct in assuming that you hold the original of this.’
Captain James laughed, a sound like cracked cans falling down uncarpeted stairs.
‘As I said before,’ said Captain James, ‘the brains in this building must be worth their weight in gold.’
Tony’s hand, now clenched into a fist, was withdrawn from the table and hidden below the table with its fellow. Tony’s hands were itching, but Tony not only looked like his father, he had his father’s intelligence and perhaps more. Tony said:
‘And I take it that you want to sell me the original of this letter?’
Once more Captain James laughed. ‘Brains going?’ he said. ‘Why the hell should I sell you the original? What I do with the original’s my own business. The original,’ said Captain James, ‘is, if you want to know, Mister Benedik, reposing in the vaults of the National & Shire Bank, Felton Street branch, W1. And there it’s going to stay! What I’ve come here for’—here the face of Captain James was more like the things that peer down from the cornices of Gothic cathedrals than any human face has any right to be—‘what I’ve come here for is just to borrow a little “ready.” Nothing, of course, to do with anything I’ve showed you just now. Just as a matter of a trifling loan from one pal to another. It’s most unfortunate that mai Bankahs in London should not yet have been advased that I’m a millionah. Until they are advased—and God alone knows when that’ll be!—I’m forced, my deah fellah, to borrow. What I should like,’ said Captain James, ‘and what I’m damn well going to have, is a couple of hundred quid just to go on with.’
‘You are going,’ said Tony slowly, each word seeming to be forced out of him, ‘to have a couple of hundred quid, are you? Just to be going on with?’
He got suddenly to his feet; his chair, thrust back, rocked for a moment; seemed about to fall, then settled itself.
Captain James moved his chair back another half-inch. Captain James looked even more alert than he had before.
‘Now!’ said Captain James. ‘Now, now! … What I mean, if you want a rough house, have one. But I shouldn’t, laddie. I shouldn’t! You see, if, before I sent you to the hospital, I was to get some terrible injuries … Well, think of my doctah’s bills. That two hundred quid would have to be five, and I should just hate that to happen, old chahp!’
‘Has anyone,’ said Tony, ‘ever told you exactly what a blot you are on the face of the world?’
‘Cut that,’ said Captain James, and now, though his smile was gone, he was even more unseemly than before, ‘right out!’
Tony put out a groping hand behind him, found the arm of his chair, pulled it towards him and sat. He opened a drawer at his right hand.
Captain James shot to his feet as if he had been galvanised. Captain James had seen drawers open before. Captain James’ hand went to his left armpit. ‘Now then!’ said Captain James.
‘This,’ said Tony, ‘is not Mexico City.’ His hand closed the drawer and came back to the table-top bearing a cheque-book.
‘A thousand apologies!’ said Captain James. He sat down again.
‘I am writing,’ said Tony, his pen travelling over the face of a long and important-seeming blue cheque-form, ‘a cheque payable to—What’s your initial, by the way?’
‘Baptismal name,’ said Captain James, ‘Inigo. To my friends, “Glassy.” Owing to my habit of never waiting to draw a cork out of a bottle but just cracking the neck off with my teeth.’ Captain James seemed in good humour.
‘I am writing,’ said Tony again, ‘a cheque … payable to Inigo James … for the sum of … one … hundred … pounds …’
‘Oh, are you?’ said Captain James. ‘Are you indeed? I think I said two hundred.’
Tony stopped writing. He looked up. ‘You did,’ said Tony, ‘but I’m writing a cheque for one hundred pounds, and I’m going to ask you, Captain James,—what are you a Captain in, by the way, or of?—I’m going to ask you whether you would come and see me at, let me see, four o’clock tomorrow afternoon, when we could doubtless have a nice cup of China tea together—and discuss some possible permanent arrangement.’
Captain James thought hard. He said at last:
‘Nobody can say that Glassy James is hard! My whole trouble in life, son, has been my soft heart. I accept your proposal as made from one gentleman to another …’
‘That,’ said Tony, ‘must be very difficult.’ He blotted the cheque, ripped it off with a little hishing sound, and threw it across the table. It landed, not upon the table-edge, but upon the floor at Captain James’s feet.
‘I’m not proud,’ said Captain James. ‘Not too proud, any road, to pick up a cheque for a hundred. But if you wouldn’t mind keeping your hand away from that drawer while I stoop down, I should be much obliged.’
Captain James stooped down. He picked up the cheque, but all the time, throughout his stooping, his right hand was below his coat and beneath his left armpit.
‘That,’ said Captain James, having scrutinised the cheque and put it into a strangely empty seeming wallet, ‘is ve-ry nice!’ He got to his feet. ‘And I’ll be here, as you say, to drink a cup of tea with you—beautiful stuff, tea!—at four o’clock tomorrow.’
‘Do!’ said Tony. ‘Do!’ His tone had changed. It was now so pleasant as to be almost ingratiating. He even smiled, with an effort which cost him, he explained afterwards to Peter, a stiff neck for three days. But he managed it bravely. He even, as Captain James stood up, thrusting his wallet firmly down into its pocket, extended his hand. He made it of set purpose a hand as limp as a dead cod. Captain James squeezed the hand with his fur-backed five-fingered enormity.
‘Ow!’ said Tony, by this time well within his part. ‘You are strong!’
Captain James laughed once more. A hundred tin cans fell down twenty-five uncarpeted steps.
‘I’m so weak now,’ said Captain James, ‘in my old age, that I can’t any longer do that trick of splitting a lioness from mouth to tail by getting her upper jaw in my right hand and her lower jaw in my left. I can only do cubs now!’
‘I see,’ said Tony. His face was anguished. He massaged with gentle left hand the fingers of his right—an admirable piece of acting. He pressed a bell upon his desk, and presently Charles came.
‘Charles,’ said Mr Anthony X. Benedik, ‘will you show Captain James the way to the lift, and will you also tell Miss Pagan that Captain James is coming to see me at four o’clock tomorrow and must be admitted immediately.’
Captain James slapped Charles upon the shoulder. ‘Unks!’ said Charles, and then, ‘Sorry, sir, I’m sure, sir!’ He looked at Tony as he spoke.
Tony smiled at him. ‘You needn’t worry, Charles. Captain James doesn’t know his own strength.’
‘Goodbah!’ said Captain James with another of those smiles. ‘We meet again at Philippi!’
2
Sergeant Bellows has been day (and half the night) porter at Croft’s Hotel ever since that unfortunate day when, owing to that trifling incident of the petty cash at Halliwells he was dismissed from the Corps of Commissionaires.
Sergeant Bellows’ long thin person is so unlike a Sergeant’s that his claim to that rank is probably true. He wears, in the morning, a dingy and bastard uniform suggesting almost equally the Captain of a Gravesend-to-Windsor-three-and-sixpenny-Sunday-return-ticket-steamer and a Lance-Corporal in the Bashi-Bazouks. He never somehow succeeds in looking, although indeed it does, as if the uniform belonged to him. He is thin and drooping and disillusioned with weary straw-coloured moustaches and weary gin-glazed eyes. There is, his whole being seems to cry out to you, no hope for Sergeant Bellows; no possibility that ever will Sergeant Bellows do anything but be day (and half the night) porter at Croft’s Hotel. Carrying baggage upstairs; carrying baggage downstairs; getting what tips he can—and these, in Croft’s, are not many—cleaning silver; sweeping, very occasionally, carpets; after lunch carrying drinks to those residents who want them (because Albert is off in the afternoons); after dinner, throughout half the night, dealing (because Miss Figwell, who is ‘Receptions,’ is off after dinner) with the steady stream of very dubious husbands and wives who never have any luggage and who have always done something like missing the last train back to their imaginary joint home.
Only once during this year had Sergeant Bellows been seen to smile and only three times to run, but this morning, Sergeant Bellows did both.
At two-thirty exactly by Sergeant Bellows’ watch a taxi pulled up outside Croft’s and from it came, into the palmed but dusty ‘Entrance Lounge’ which measured eleven-feet by thirteen, the cause of Sergeant Bellows’ blitheness and activity.
Sergeant Bellows, despite his hopelessness, knew a lady when he saw one. He also, despite his air of being entirely devoted to gin, knew beauty when he saw it. And this young lady … this young lady who had come in the taxi and had got out of the taxi and was now standing in the Lounge talking to Sergeant Bellows … this young lady had both gentility and beauty in greater measure than Sergeant Bellows could remember having seen in the past fifteen years.
The young lady smiled at him. The young lady said, after a glance round the Entrance Lounge which showed to her that there was no one else within sight, that she wished to see her brother, the name being Mornington.
Sergeant Bellows put up his right hand in that habitual gesture with him of head-scratching, but snatched the hand away admirably before it had reached its goal. He said:
‘Mornington, Miss? Mornington? Mornington? Mornington?’
‘The name,’ said the young lady, ‘is Mornington.’
‘Oh! Mornington,’ said Sergeant Bellows. ‘Well, Miss, I’m very sorry, but I don’t recollect …’
‘Oh, don’t!’ said the young lady. ‘Please don’t tell me my brother isn’t here!’
‘I won’t, Miss!’ said Sergeant Bellows with fervour. The young lady’s anguish had been very real. ‘Leastways, Miss,’ he said, ‘I wouldn’t if I could help it. Perhaps the best thing I could do, Miss, would be to look at the Register. I don’t remember all the names of the people that stays here. Birds of passage, you know, birds of passage. Here today. Gone tomorrow.’
‘If you would,’ said the young lady smiling such a smile at Sergeant Bellows as to cause that phenomenon of his first running, ‘I should be most terribly grateful.’
‘Certainly, Miss, certainly!’ said Sergeant Bellows. ‘Anything to oblige, I’m sure.’
He then ran. He ran from just within the doors of the Entrance Lounge to the small and hutch-like office of Miss Figwell. He came out again almost immediately. He was not running now. He was walking and his knees sagged beneath the weight of an enormous leather-bound book.
‘Here we are, Miss! Here we are. You can see if your brother’s here.’
He put down the Register upon one of the wicker tables which put the Lounge in Entrance. He did this with something of a flourish, marred by the collapse of the table …
‘Oh, I’m so sorry,’ said Miss Mornington, ‘I’m afraid I’m giving you an awful lot of trouble.’
‘Miss,’ said Sergeant Bellows, now upon his knees and looking up with a queer, craning motion of his long neck which made him look more like an ostrich than ever. ‘No trouble at all. A pleasure!’
He rose at last to his feet, the Register securely clasped. He tried with it another table this time and this table was stouter than its fellow. It swayed on its cane legs but remained upright. Together Sergeant Bellows and Miss Mornington peered at the Register …
Sergeant Bellows straightened himself; shook his head sadly; his moustache seemed to droop even more than usual. There came to his long, thin face a look so intensely lugubrious that Miss Mornington gazed at him with compassion not altogether concealing incipient mirth. He shook his head woefully.
‘It’s no good, Miss. He’s not here.’
Any signs of vivacity and the joy of living which might have been in evidence upon Miss Mornington’s face were now obliterated. Miss Mornington seemed, indeed, to Sergeant Bellows’ intense, poignant and yet somehow magically exciting dismay, to be upon the brink of tears. Her lower lip trembled. Her large, strange, golden-coloured eyes seemed bright with unshed tears. Sergeant Bellows could hardly bear it. He stretched out a hand to pat Miss Mornington tenderly upon the shoulder; snatched it back only just in time.
‘There, Miss, there …’ said Sergeant Bellows, ‘don’t you take on …’
‘I think,’ said the young lady faintly, ‘I think … if I might sit down … Such a disappointment … If I could sit down somewhere … No, no, not here … Some one might see me …’
‘Certainly, Miss, certainly,’ said Sergeant Bellows in anguish, ‘certainly, Miss. Certainly. Certainly. Certainly. This way, Miss!’ And again Sergeant Bellows ran. He ran now from the centre of the Entrance Lounge to the door marked READING AND WRITING ROOM. This door he held open.
With a handkerchief pressed to her mouth—a little handkerchief which bravely endeavoured to conceal her agitation—Miss Mornington passed through the Entrance Lounge into the READING AND WRITING ROOM.
This was a chamber some nine feet by six. It seemed, certainly, that no one could ever read in it; if they had, they had certainly taken away with them what they were reading. That someone, however, might at one time or another have been expected to write there was proved conclusively by the presence, standing in the window, of a small and dusty and much battered bureau. Upon this bureau lay a piebald piece of blotting paper, a crusted ink stand and a partitioned wooden box holding paper and envelopes. Before this bureau stood the room’s second chair, the other being a lopsided and horse-hair vomiting edifice which stood before the cold grate in which lay, miserably, a piece of pink crinkled paper whose pinkness was almost entirely obliterated by soot.
Sergeant Bellows, his actions still distinguished by an unusual celerity, pushed forward the mountainous leather chair. Into it Miss Mornington sank with a sigh of relief and closed her eyes. The tiny handkerchief was still pressed to her lips.
‘Can I get you anything, Miss?’ said Sergeant Bellows, his moustaches agitated by a fervent pity.
‘If I might,’ said Miss Mornington faintly from behind the handkerchief, ‘have a glass of water.’
‘Water, Miss?’ said Sergeant Bellows, incredulously. And then, having collected himself: ‘Certainly, Miss. You just sit there and I’ll get you a glass of water. Certainly, Miss.’ Sergeant Bellows was gone. When he came back, walking as carefully as a tender-footed cat upon hot ploughshares, a thick, chipped tumbler between his dirty, careful hands, Miss Mornington was sitting upon the arm of her chair. She seemed much recovered. She said:
‘I’m feeling so much better! I can’t think what made me so silly!’ She took the glass of water from Sergeant Bellows’ outstretched hands. ‘Thank you very much,’ she said. �
�You have been kind.’ She sipped at the water and, rising, set the glass down upon the mantelpiece. ‘I can’t think,’ she said again, ‘what made me so silly. Except … well, you see, my brother is all I have in the world and I haven’t seen him for four or five years … and … and …’—a return of Miss Mornington’s distress seemed imminent but was bravely mastered—‘and I’m afraid … well, I’m afraid he’s been getting himself into trouble … I wish you’d do something for me. Would you?’
‘Would I?’ said Sergeant Bellows with tremendous emphasis, ‘you just try me, Miss!’
Miss Mornington tried him. Miss Mornington stammered at first, but, warming to her work, asked Sergeant Bellows whether, should her brother come, under whatever name, he would let her know. Miss Mornington then gave him her telephone number—which she seemed to have some slight difficulty in remembering—and a description of her brother.
‘He’s tall,’ said Miss Mornington, ‘a very tall man; rather slim; very broad shoulders; very well-dressed. He would have been,’ added Miss Mornington, ‘very good-looking if it hadn’t been for his accident. I don’t think you could possibly miss him! His nose is very crooked and one side of his mouth goes up much higher than the other.’
‘Just so soon, Miss,’ said Sergeant Bellows earnestly, ‘as the gentleman comes, I’ll ring up.’
‘Thank you,’ said Miss Mornington, ‘you are very, very good.’ She rose to her feet. It seemed to Sergeant Bellows that the READING AND WRITING ROOM was suddenly a pleasant place. Miss Mornington, with most unobtrusive fumbling in her bag, produced coins. Miss Mornington said, so charmingly that even a prouder man could not have refused: ‘I wonder whether you would be so nice as to drink my health some time.’
‘I will that, Miss!’ said Sergeant Bellows, taking the money, ‘and I might tell you, Miss, that if he comes here I’ll look after him.’
Again Miss Mornington smiled. In reply, Sergeant Bellows almost smiled too.
The Rynox Mystery Page 11
