by Molly Thynne
Bond shook his head.
“Don’t even know where it is,” he said.
“Then you had better find out, my friend. Turn to the right as you leave this building, and take the second to the right again and you will see it. The Onyx Beauty Parlour. Inside you will find a mint of money, all in little pots, six quite unusually pretty girls, and a fat lady with the smooth, unwrinkled skin of a girl of seventeen. It is remarkable how many fat ladies have beautiful skins,” he reflected. “That is why they are so often to be found in beauty parlours. Go and look at her, Bond. You will find your office on the ground floor behind the shop.”
Bond looked even sulkier than usual.
“I suppose I can take it that you own the place,” he said. “What do you suppose I shall do there? Isn’t your fat lady capable of running the show by herself?”
“She does not run it, my friend. She sells the little pots. The show is run by an elderly spinster of repellent aspect, who, by the way, is one of the most efficient accountants I have ever met. May you prove a worthy successor. She leaves at the end of the week, and before she goes she will have time to show you round.”
Bond hesitated.
“Look here,” he said at last. “I don’t see myself getting mixed up with anything fishy of that sort. The Terpsychorean was all in the day’s work, but I draw the line at shady massage establishments.”
De Silva turned on him with such venomous swiftness that he shrank.
“You draw the line!” he exclaimed, and his voice cut like a whip-lash. “Since when, I should like to know, have you been in a position to do any such thing? If there is a line to be drawn, I will draw it, when and where I please. Understand that?”
Bond’s pasty face crimsoned.
“You can be as confoundedly insulting as you please, de Silva,” he whispered furiously. “You may think you’ve got me in the hollow of your hand, but let me tell you, once for all, that there’s a point beyond which I won’t go. That business of Lord Dalberry the other night—”
“Well, what about that business of Lord Dalberry?”
De Silva’s voice was like silk now.
“There was something confoundedly fishy about it. It’s the last time I’ll allow myself to be mixed up with anything of that sort, and I want you to realize it.”
He had begun well, but, like all weak men, he lacked staying power. Already his words were ceasing to carry conviction.
“And if I ask you to undertake some little job for me which, let us say, does not meet with your approval?” asked de Silva gently.
“I shall refuse, that’s all. I warn you that unless this Onyx business is straight I’ll have nothing to do with it.”
“You’ll refuse? And then, my friend?”
“You can do your damnedest.”
Bond’s voice shook a little. He knew only too well what de Silva’s damnedest might be. He knew, also, that he would never face it. De Silva read him easily.
“Listen to me,” he said simply. “You are in my hands, and you will do whatever I choose to tell you, neither more nor less, for the simple reason that you are a coward and a bully, and stick at nothing to save your dirty skin. All your life you will be in the hands of some one stronger than yourself, and all your life you will bluster and talk about your honour and your word as an Englishman, and quote worn-out tags that mean nothing to you any more. And all your life, I tell you, you will give in in the end. There is nothing too filthy for you to touch, and nothing to which you will not stoop, for a price. You can go. I have not time to listen to your scruples, because I know what they are worth. Get out!” Bond, his face livid, rose without a word and picked up his hat. There was murder in his eyes, but de Silva had summed him up justly, and knew that he was too weak to be dangerous.
“You will meet me to-morrow at the Onyx Beauty Parlour at eleven, and I will give you your orders. Go.”
And Bond went.
CHAPTER X
As de Silva had foreseen, Bond came to heel meekly enough the following morning. Except when it suited his purpose, the Argentino was no bully, and, Bond having taken his medicine, he was satisfied to let the matter rest and ignore the little scene which had taken place between them the day before.
The Onyx Beauty Parlour was typical of its kind. It was, as de Silva had said, only a few minutes’ walk from the Escatorial, and stood, almost within sight of the back windows of de Silva’s flat, at the angle of a broad but unfrequented thoroughfare and a discreet side street, inhabited mainly by private dressmakers, hairdressers, stationers, and other modest, but respectable, danglers on the fringes of a prosperous neighbourhood.
Bond was inclined to sneer at the locality, but de Silva had chosen more wisely than a critic of Bond’s calibre was likely to realize. On the opposite side of the road to the Onyx a small hat-shop had been opened about six months before by the wife of a well-known actor-manager. It had had an immediate success in the theatrical world, had supplied the hats for two big productions, and had lately been “discovered” by the ultra-smart American wife of a rich banker, since which it had been patronized by the greater part of that opulent cosmopolitan set that had its centre in Park Lane, and its outermost fringes in Bayswater. Here was a clientele after de Silva’s own heart. The theatrical world would give him all the advertisement he desired, while the buyers could be relied upon to pay. Already customers had begun to drift over from the hat-shop, and, once they had been, they came again, for the astute Argentino had seen to it that each of his pretty girls was an expert in her own line. The little shop with its rather precious window display and its charmingly-decorated interior was beginning to be talked about, and his fat lady was an accomplished saleswoman. And, apart from the fact that it was rapidly becoming a paying proposition, the Onyx suited him admirably in other ways. What these ways were he did not divulge to Bond as he initiated him into the workings of the establishment, but he said enough to rouse in him a certain gloomy curiosity.
They were standing in the little room behind the shop, which was to serve as Bond’s office. The hairdressing and massage departments were upstairs on the next floor, and the manicure salon was housed in a slightly larger room behind the shop.
“Well, what do you think of it?” asked de Silva.
Bond relapsed into even more settled gloom. He detested the whole atmosphere of the place, and, characteristically, could not bring himself to believe that it was being run on strictly business principles, wherein he did his employer an injustice. From de Silva’s point of view the place was a purely money-making concern, and he was far too astute to jeopardize its success by permitting anything that might bring him under the eye of the police.
“It’s a smart enough little place,” admitted Bond grudgingly. “But how you’re going to make it pay in a neighbourhood like this, I don’t see, unless you’re up to some fishy business, in which case, you can take my word for it, it won’t last long. I’ve seen too much of that sort of thing not to know. And I don’t want to be mixed up in it.”
“It is hardly a question of what you want, my friend,” remarked de Silva suavely. “However, you can set your mind at ease. I assure you, for the hundredth time, that this is a shop, neither more nor less, and it’s going to be a paying one before I’ve finished with it. Your police, that you are so much afraid of, will not put their noses into the place, or, if they do, they will find nothing but my fat lady and her little pots. The only shady element in the whole business will be yourself, my good Bond. Try to get that into your thick head. And stop trying to be funny.”
“I’m not trying to be funny,” stated Bond literally, looking more lugubrious than ever. “If you say you’re running the thing on the straight, I suppose I’ve got to take your word for it. But you won’t make it pay. You’re too far out. And the whole thing’s on too small a scale. As it is, you’re cramped for lack of space. Can’t you get the whole house?”
“I have got it,” said de Silva curtly. “But I’m using the top floor,
and you will have to make shift with what you’ve got here. I’m keeping it small and select on purpose.”
Bond sighed.
“Have it your own way, but if you’d take my advice you’d take the whole of the ground floor for the shop and move the face massage and all that stuff up to the attics. It’d be an immense improvement—”
“I am running this place in my own way,” cut in de Silva sharply. “The top floor I want for my own purposes. I have things stored there. And, while we are on the subject, I may as well make one thing clear.”
He pointed to a tall glass-fronted cupboard which stood against the left-hand wall of the room.
“The top floor of this house was once a flat, and it has its own front door, as you no doubt observed, to the left of the shop window. From there a private staircase runs up to the three attic rooms. The only inside connection between the shop and the flat is through the door behind that cupboard. I have blocked it on purpose, and I keep the key of the front door. You understand?”
Bond understood perfectly. His face cleared for the first time.
“Now I get you,” he said. “If you want to use this place as a blind for something else, it’s nothing to do with me. I’m paid to run the shop, and if you choose to shut off the rest of the house, it’s your own affair.”
“See to it that you do not make it your affair, then. Only, try to grasp one thing. This business is not a blind, as you so neatly put it, but a genuine financial undertaking, and, if I employ you as manager, I expect it to be properly run. If things go wrong, you will be personally responsible. I have some boxes stored in the flat upstairs, and I may want to get at them any time during the day or night, and I do not want my movements interfered with. That is all.”
Bond nodded. After his employer had gone he settled down to inspect the books with the help of the manageress whose place he was taking. He worked till late in the afternoon; indeed the staff, including the manageress, had gone and the shutters were up before he was ready to leave.
He pulled the roll-top of the desk down and locked it. Then, stepping lightly, he looked into the shop and made sure that the place was really deserted. Having ascertained that he was alone in the building, he went over to the glass-fronted cupboard which concealed the door on to the private staircase and examined it minutely. The glass door was unlocked, and opened easily when he tried it. He took out the row of ornate powder boxes and perfume bottles which filled the lower shelf and piled them on the table. Then he ran his fingers carefully over the back-board of the cupboard. But there was no give in it anywhere, and though he pulled out the shelf, he could find no kind of latch or fastening behind it. The cupboard was what it appeared to be, a solid, unpretentious piece of office furniture. He replaced the contents, closed the doors, and stood gazing at it thoughtfully. De Silva had said that it was the only means of communication with the flat above, and, though he had been over the whole of the premises of the Onyx, he had seen nothing anywhere else resembling a door.
Struck by a sudden thought, he stepped forward and, grasping the cupboard firmly, tried to shift it. But he could not move it an inch. Either it was a good deal heavier than it looked or it was attached to the wall in some way. Evidently his employer had spared no pains to cut off the shop from the flat he proposed to retain for himself.
Bond was reluctantly obliged to confess himself beaten, but he found it hard, even now, to tear himself away. He had lived by his wits, such as they were, for so long that his mind had degenerated into a lamentable state of mingled suspicion and cunning. And he knew de Silva. In spite of the latter’s assurances, Bond had never for a moment swerved from his original conviction that the Onyx was merely a shield for something very different. The fact that the business was being run on law-abiding lines was in itself enough to convince him that it had something more important behind it, and he had every intention of discovering what this was. He had not believed for a moment that de Silva had really cut off all connection between the shop and the flat, and had made up his mind that the way through lay in the back of the cupboard. And now he was obliged to confess himself beaten.
He picked up his coat and hat and prepared to leave the building. His hand was actually on the knob of the door leading from the office to the shop, when a sound reached his ears that held him frozen to attention.
Some one was unlocking the street door of the closed shop. Bond heard footsteps and the soft click of the latch as the intruder closed the door behind him, and with the sound came the realization that there was only one person, barring himself, who possessed a key to the shop. De Silva! And de Silva was the last man in the world he wished to meet at that moment.
With a quick glance round to see that he had left nothing out of place, Bond slipped silently across the room and into a small cloak-room and lavatory that had been built out over the yard behind. By leaving the door ajar he found he could command a view of at least half the office.
He waited, and from his hiding-place he saw the door open and de Silva step lightly in. He carried a suitcase and was whistling softly to himself, and his thin lips bore a smile of sheer satisfaction that made the watcher’s fingers twitch with longing. He had hated his employer for a long time, and the feeling had increased immeasurably in intensity in the last twenty-four hours. He drew back still farther behind the protecting door, but his eyes never left the other man for a moment.
De Silva gave a quick glance round the office and then went swiftly to the cupboard. For a moment Bond lost sight of him behind the angle of the cupboard. Then there was a click and the whole cupboard swung out into the room with the door to which it was attached, running over the carpeted floor on castors cleverly set at an angle.
The Argentino disappeared into the passage beyond, and the cupboard rolled easily back into place behind him.
Bond straightened himself, for his position had become cramped, and adjusted the door more carefully to his line of vision. He had barely done so than the cupboard swung open again and de Silva appeared once more, this time without the suitcase, and departed by the way he had come.
Bond gave him five minutes or so after the shop door had shut behind him, then he left his hiding-place and hurried across the room to the cupboard. He ran his hand over the side, only to find that there was no protuberance of any kind, but, slipping his hand between the cupboard and the door to which it was attached, he had no difficulty in finding the catch that released the lock. The cupboard swung open and he disappeared. He was gone for about fifteen minutes, and when he came back and rolled the cupboard gently back to its accustomed place against the wall, his face had lost something of its discontent, and there was a satisfied gleam in his eyes that boded ill for his unsuspecting employer.
During the days that followed he kept a careful eye on the customers who patronized the Onyx, but there was not one among them that he could justly designate as suspicious. Nobody, to his knowledge, made use of the concealed entrance to the flat during business hours, and though he hovered persistently in the neighbourhood of the quiet street after the shop was closed, he never once surprised de Silva on his way there.
Lady Dalberry came twice in the course of the following week and purchased various of the Onyx preparations, “for the good of the house,” as she explained to Bond, de Silva having begged her to patronize his new venture. On one occasion she brought Carol, who sampled the hairdressing and manicure departments and expressed herself more than satisfied. Some days later Carol came again, this time by herself, and was joined, Bond noticed, almost immediately by de Silva, who had not been near the place for several days. The little episode afforded Bond a certain malicious satisfaction, for the Argentino’s unconcealed delight in the girl’s company was only equalled by her obvious desire to get rid of him as speedily and courteously as possible. He was not to be shaken off, however, and insisted on showing her round the entire establishment and seeing her back to the Escatorial afterwards. It was significant that she did not visit the Onyx again.
Bond would have been even better pleased if he had known how much of her time was being spent in avoiding de Silva. In spite of Lady Dalberry’s uniform kindness and real consideration, it was beginning to dawn on the girl that the joint menage of the Escatorial was not quite the ideal arrangement it had seemed at first. For one thing, she did not care for her aunt’s friends, and she had begun to dislike de Silva definitely. Also, though she hesitated to admit this even to herself, her estrangement with Dalberry was beginning to worry her. When, in her anger, she had definitely refused to see him, she had not expected him to take his dismissal without a protest. And now, for more than a week, she had heard nothing of him, and as she had not seen Jasper Mellish, she was unaware of his efforts to set himself right in her eyes. Several times Lady Dalberry had tried to broach the subject of “that poor Gillie” and what she termed “this foolish misunderstanding,” but Carol had flatly refused to discuss it, and she had been obliged to let it drop. But the girl was beginning to feel both ill-used and apprehensive, and, with her native honesty, was constrained to admit that she had only herself to thank for her anxiety.
At last, one day, finding herself in the neighbourhood of the Albany, she decided to drop in on Jasper Mellish and see if she could not pick up a hint as to Dalberry’s movements.
She found Mellish at home, and in a mood that was new to her. She had learned long ago how to humour him when he was on one of his brief, but violent, fits of irritation; but in spite of their many heated arguments, she had never before come definitely under the ban of his disapproval.
He greeted her curtly.
“So you’ve come,” he said. “To be frank with you, I’m not sure that the moment has not passed. I said ‘at once’ in my letter, if you recollect.”
