Campion gaped at the man, who smiled at him with bland satisfaction and expressed the pious hope that he had enjoyed the meal. Campion was taking out his notecase in stolid defiance when the maître d’hôtel, round as a football and sleek as a seal, appeared to corroborate the first man’s story.
‘No charge, sir,’ he said. ‘No, no, no charge. If only you had telephoned we should have been so happy to reserve you a better table.’
Campion looked down at the onyx hat which sat, prim and shining, on the edge of an ashtray. The man followed his glance and beamed.
‘You are satisfied?’ he inquired.
Campion flicked the trinket with his forefinger and a memory bringing enlightenment in its train blazed up suddenly in his mind.
‘That pays the waiter, does it?’ he said.
And then they both laughed; but Campion laughed all the way home.
It was over a fortnight later when he received a visit from Peter Herrick. That young man was in an indignant mood.
‘I say, I was glad you phoned,’ he said, coming into the study in the Piccadilly flat like a small electric storm. ‘I was just making up my mind to come down on you for another spot of help when you rang. Your success with old man Burns was so sensational that I was going to risk a second appeal. You wouldn’t care to be the complete hero and have another go, would you?’
His host, who was mixing the drinks, looked round from the cocktail cabinet and grinned.
‘My influence wore off, did it?’ he said. ‘I wondered if it might.’
Peter sat down. ‘It weakened,’ he admitted. ‘It’s that unspeakable little toot Whitman, you know. He’s got an idiotic line in pseudo smart-set talk that gets the old boy all of a flutter. When we’re alone he’s perfectly happy, apart from the fact that he wants to talk about you still, which is curious – forgive me, but you know what I mean.’
He broke off to laugh at himself.
‘I’m an ass,’ he said. ‘The whole truth of the matter – and you may be astounded to hear it, for I’m completely bewildered by it myself – the truth is that I’m nuts about Prudence, Campion, absolutely nuts. I want her to marry me, and she’s dead keen on the idea, which is another staggering piece of luck, and, logically speaking, everything ought to be pretty good. However, the old boy is completely taken in by Whitman. Whitman sells him the most fantastic hints on etiquette and he falls for it every time.’
Campion looked sympathetic.
‘Old Burns has an idea that Whitman is some sort of social capture, I take it?’ he ventured.
‘That’s it, I’m afraid.’ Peter was embarrassed. ‘It’s ludicrous, of course, and very uncomfortable, especially as the old lad himself is quite all right, really. Apart from this fantastic snob complex he’s a darned interesting, shrewd old chap. Whitman is simply taking advantage of his pet weakness. Prudence says her old man has always had a touch of it, but it’s got worse since he retired and settled down to enjoy his cash. Still, for Prudence’s sake I’d put up with Whitman if it wasn’t for this last piece of cheek. He’s had the impudence to suggest that he might marry her himself.’
‘Has he, by George?’ said Campion. ‘That’s sailing near the wind, isn’t it?’
‘I thought so.’ Peter spoke with feeling. ‘Unfortunately the old man is half sold in the idea. He’s anxious for Prudence to be happy, of course, for he’s dead set on doing his duty and that sort of thing, but you can see that the idea of the socialite son-in-law is going over big. What is so infuriating is that he’s being taken in. Whitman is about as bogus as they go. He’s quite sincere, I expect, but look at him! What is he? A wretched little tuft-hunter with no more brains than that soda-water syphon. Wasn’t that your impression?’
‘Since you press me, no,’ said Mr Campion judicially. ‘No, old boy, I’m sorry, but it wasn’t. I think you underestimate him. However, that’s beside the point. What does a fellow do now? Have you anything in mind?’
‘Well –’ Peter was evidently leading up to a delicate subject with some trepidation. ‘I may as well make a clean breast of it. Old Burns wants to take Prudence, Whitman and myself out to a meal tonight to “talk things over”. It went through my mind that if I had the infernal cheek to ask you to join the party you might be able to do your celebrated heart-softening act once again. The old boy will be tickled to death, of course. He’s worried my life out to get hold of you again. But I do see that it’s a ghastly imposition from your point of view.’ He paused unhappily. ‘It’s the limit,’ he said. ‘The ultimate outside edge. But she’s grown so darned important to me that I’m forgetting the ordinary decencies.’
‘My dear chap, not at all. I think it might be an extremely jolly gathering.’ Campion sounded positively enthusiastic: ‘There’s only one thing, though,’ he hurried on, while his visitor eyed him in astonishment, ‘you don’t think you could fix it so that we went either to the Gillyflower or the Maison Grecque?’
The other man sat up, his eyes wide with suspicion. ‘Why on earth do you suggest that?’
Campion evaded his glance.
‘They’re the only two places in London at which one can eat, aren’t they?’ he murmured idiotically.
‘Look here, Campion, what do you know about all this business?’ Peter was scrambling out of his chair. ‘You might have been imitating Whitman, except that he’s got an extra half-dozen perfectly appalling places of the same type on his list.’
‘Half a dozen others, has he?’ Campion seemed impressed. ‘What a thorough bird he is.’
‘Thorough?’ said Peter. ‘I thought he was off his head.’
‘Oh, dear me, no. He’s an intelligent chap. I thought that the first time I saw him. You’ll fix it then, will you? Either the Gillyflower or the Maison Grecque.’
The younger man stretched out his hand for the telephone.
‘I’ll get on to the old man this minute before you can change your mind,’ he announced. ‘Don’t say I didn’t warn you it might be a trying party. You’re an astonishing chap, aren’t you? I didn’t know you’d ever seen Whitman before I introduced him. Where do you keep all this information?’
‘Under my little hat,’ said Campion innocently. ‘All under my remarkable little hat.’
The first thirty-five minutes of Mr Thomas Burns’s little dinner-party at the Maison Grecque amply justified Peter Herrick’s worst fears. The restaurant itself was a trifle more pretentious than the Gillyflower, and on this occasion the service was even more ostentatiously attentive than that which had distinguished the latter half of Aunt Eva’s night out. Mr Burns himself was considerably subdued by the fuss accorded him and frequently fingered his tight evening collar in a wistful fashion which made his desire to take it off as clear as if he had announced it in so many words.
Campion, glancing round the table, decided that Prudence was embarrassed by the avowed object of the gathering, but there was a line of determination in her firm mouth and an expression in her eyes when she glanced at Peter which made him like her.
Mr Herrick was frankly distrait and unhelpful, while Campion did his gallant best with the conversation.
The only person in the party who seemed both to experience no discomfort himself and to be capable of ignoring it in his fellows was Mr Norman Whitman. All through the over-elaborate meal he sat bored and superior, smiling superciliously at Campion’s conversational efforts and only opening his own mouth to murmur an occasional comment on some celebrity whom he saw, or thought he saw, among the neighbouring diners.
Campion, who made a hobby of what he was pleased to call ‘tick-fancying’, could hardly refrain from the open gloat. The man was a collector’s piece. His pallid shining forehead could express ‘refaned distaste’ with more downright vulgarity than seemed possible on a single surface and he revealed a line in ‘host deflation’ which had to be heard and seen to be believed.
It soon became clear to everybody that Mr Burns’s hope of a ‘little friendly chat about love and courtship’
was doomed, and the young people were openly relieved. Mr Burns himself was depressed and Norman remained aloof but condescending.
Towards the end of the meal, however, the host brightened. A childlike gleam of anticipation came into his eyes, and Campion caught him glancing towards him once or twice with disarming eagerness. Moreover, every now and again he felt in his waistcoat pocket and at last, when coffee was served and Peter had carried Prudence off on to the dance floor, he could deny himself no longer but took a small onyx hat out of its hiding-place and let it roll over and over in his plump palm.
Norman Whitman frowned at him warningly, but the Burns blood was up and the old man ignored his mentor. He was watching Campion with the same shy delight and triumph which is displayed by the child who suddenly produces a new toy as good as the other boy’s.
Campion did not look at Norman Whitman. He stretched out his hand.
‘That’s very attractive, isn’t it?’ he said, and, taking up the charm, he turned it over.
The old man laughed. ‘It’s quite genuine,’ he said. ‘It’s the real McCoy, isn’t it?’
Still Campion did not glance at the third man, who was watching the incident with a face as innocent of expression as a ball of wool.
‘I think so.’ Campion spoke softly and frowned. It seemed such a shame.
‘I think so, too.’ The old man chuckled over the words. ‘Waiter, bring my bill!’
It did not work.
After five minutes of such unbearable embarrassment and chagrin that Campion could have wept for him, Mr Burns had to face that indubitable fact.
He rolled the hat, he placed it black and shining in the midst of the white table-cloth, he waved it frantically beneath the waiter’s nose, but the wooden face did not change and the man remained polite but immovable as a rock while the bill stayed folded on the table.
There came a moment – it was nicely timed – when both Mr Burns and Mr Campion looked at Norman Whitman. It was a steady inspection which lasted for some little time. The fat man did not change colour. His boiled eyes remained blank and his expression reserved. After a while, however, the silence became unendurable and he rose with a conciliatory laugh.
‘I’ll see the manager for you, Burns,’ he murmured. ‘You must forgive these fellows. They have to be very careful.’
If the implied insult was unmistakable it was also a masterstroke, and the old man, whose eyes had been slowly narrowing, permitted himself a gleam of hope.
All the same he did not speak. He and Campion sat in silence watching the consequential figure bustling across the room, to disappear finally behind the bank of flowers which masked the exit.
After allowing his host due time for meditation, Campion leaned back in his chair and took out his own onyx hat, which he placed on the table beside the other. They were identical; two little toppers exact in every detail.
‘I had mine given me,’ Campion observed.
Burns raised his eyes from the two trinkets and stared.
‘Given you?’ he said. ‘Some gift. I thought I had a fair enough bank-roll, but I couldn’t afford to give presents like that.’
The lean man in the horn-rimmed spectacles looked apologetic.
‘A very charming American and her husband wanted to give me a little keepsake to remind me of their visit here,’ he said. ‘They bought this at Wolfgarten’s in Cellini Street. He told them it was exclusive and unique, but then he has his own definition of the term. “Unique” to Wolfgarten means one for London and one for New York. He may have charged them about a fiver. I – er – I thought I’d better tell you.’
Mr Burns was sitting up stiffly, his face blank and his small eyes grown hard. Suddenly he swung round in his chair and gazed at the bank of flowers. Campion put out a gently restraining hand.
‘Hold on,’ he said. ‘It’s entirely up to you. I’ve taken the liberty of arranging it so that you can have him if you want him. At this moment, I imagine our Norman is in the manager’s office asking why the devil the arrangement which he made here has been ignored. You see, three weeks ago he opened an account of twenty pounds each at quite a number of restaurants on the understanding that anyone who displayed a small onyx top hat, which he showed them, should be taken without question to be his personal representative. It was a curious request, but after all the personal token, the signet ring and so on, has served this sort of purpose from time immemorial, and the restaurants didn’t stand to lose anything while they held his twenty pounds.’
Mr Burns swallowed. ‘Go on,’ he said.
‘Well,’ Campion was even more diffident, ‘just now I’m afraid the manager may be explaining to Whitman that the particular twenty pounds which he invested here has been used up. Doubtless he is bringing bills to prove it. I’ve been eating here and at the Gillyflower until my little hat wouldn’t do its trick any more, and I fear I must owe our Norman quite a considerable sum. However, that’s beside the point. What is important is that the house detective is sitting in the manager’s office. Now the story which he will hear from Mr Whitman is a perfectly innocent if eccentric one. But should he subsequently get a rather different tale from you – as he certainly has from me – well, it won’t be toppers and tails and bogus countesses for our Norman for some time, will it? I’m so sorry to bring it out like this, but it seemed the only satisfactory and safe way if you should decide to prosecute.’
The old man sat perfectly still for some moments. He made a stolid, powerful figure, his shoulders bowed and his head, with its thatch of thick grey hair, thrust forward as his eyes dwelt upon the two hats. After a while he glanced up and caught Campion’s eye. There was a moment of mutual understanding and then, to the young man’s intense relief, they both laughed.
Mr Burns laughed for rather a long time for one who has been suddenly confronted with unpleasant news, and Campion was growing a trifle apprehensive when the older man pulled himself together, and picked up his own hat.
‘Five thousand pounds,’ he said, looking at it. ‘I thought it was a darned sight too cheap to be sound.’
‘Too cheap for what?’
‘Free food for life at all the best restaurants in London for as many guests up to six as I cared to bring,’ said the old man calmly. ‘Wait a minute. I’m not so daft as I look. It was a good story. Norman’s a smart fellow. He went to work very carefully. I’d known him about six weeks before he brought me in here one night, and I don’t mind admitting that he impressed me with his way of doing things.’
He paused and looked at Campion shyly. ‘I’m not what you might call a social swell,’ he said. ‘No, no, don’t be nice about it; I’m a fool but not a damned fool. I came over here with plenty of money and plenty of time. I meant to get in with the right lot and learn all the tricks and the refinements that I’d read about, and I got just about what I was asking for. Norman looked all right to me. Obviously I was wrong. Anyway, he taught me one or two useful things about the clothes to wear and so on, and then we came in here and he did his act with his damn-fool hat.
‘I was impressed. These stiffs of waiters always get me flustered, and when I saw it all go off so smoothly I was attracted. It seemed to be so easy, so dignified and gentlemanly. No money passing and so on. Well, I asked him about it, and he pretended he didn’t want to tell me. But I’m a tenacious sort of chap, and presently out it came. It was a most ingenious spiel. This hat represented the Top Hat Club, he said, a club so exclusive that only the very best people in the land belonged to it … royalty and so on. He also explained that, like all these very superior affairs, it was practically secret because the restaurant only entered into the arrangement if they were certain they were getting only the very best people.’
He broke off and grinned sheepishly.
‘Well, you can guess the rest,’ he said. ‘It seemed quite reasonable the way he told it, and the business side of it was sound. If you can buy an annuity for life why shouldn’t you buy a meal ticket, providing your honesty is guaranteed an
d they know you’re not the sort of chap to make money on it by hiring it out? Oh, I’m the mug all right, but he had luck. I happened to see your hat, you see. I didn’t mention it to him, of course, because he didn’t seem to like you and I didn’t want him getting jealous.’
‘He was going to get you elected to this club, I take it?’
‘That’s about it, son. Five thousand quid entrance fee. It seemed cheap. I’m fifty-six and I may go eating in restaurants for another twenty years. But what about you? When did you come into this?’
Campion told his story frankly. He felt it was the very least he could do with those bright eyes watching him suspiciously.
‘I remember Norman,’ he said. ‘He came back to me. It took me a tremendous time, but after my first free meal at the Gillyflower the whole thing suddenly became as clear as mud. I don’t want to depress you, but I’m afraid we’ve stumbled on the great forefather of all confidence tricks. Years and years ago, just after I came down from Cambridge, I went to Canada, and right out in the wilds I came upon a fit-up company in an awful little one-eyed town. They were real old barnstormers, the last in the world I should think, and they gave a four-hour programme, comprising a melodrama, a farce and a variety show all at one sitting. The farce was one of those traditional country tales which are handed down for generations and have no set form. The actors invent the dialogue as they go along. Well, the standard was frightful, of course, but there was one fat young man who played villains who was at least funny. He had a ridiculous walk, for one thing, and when I saw Whitman bolting down the corridor to your box he reminded me of something. Then of course when I saw the top hat at the dinner table it all came roaring back to me … What’s the matter?’
Mr Burns was gazing at him, an incredulous expression growing in his eyes as recollection struggled to life.
‘Touch ’At Pays Waiter!’ he ejaculated, thumping the table with an enormous fist. ‘Good Lord! My old grandfather told me that story out in South Africa before I was breeched. I remember it! “Touch ’At Pays Waiter”, the story of the poor silly bumpkin who was persuaded to exchange his cow for a magic hat. Good Lord! Before I was breeched!’
Mr Campion & Others Page 7