Les had both pillows on his bed bunched under the back of his head as he tried to catch up on his reading. A spy needed to know just about everything, but a spy who was also a magazine seller needed to know his stock. At least, that was his excuse for reading the film magazines. His reason for being up in the wee hours, though, was his missing wife. At least he wasn’t presently involved in anything dangerous enough that he had to worry about her being kidnapped or hurt because of his work.
He yawned and set down Photoplay. When was his strength going to return? He was tiring of the old man antics of his body. While he ought to do something about Sadie, he couldn’t find the brain cells to decide what. Go to the Richmond Inn where Sadie had gone that morning, to gather her possessions? Track down her sister who lived on Montagu Square somewhere?
He heard a thump against the front door. He frowned. It was early, but too early for newspapers or bottles to be delivered. He tugged his dressing gown from the foot of his bed and pushed the covers back.
The radiator in the hallway gurgled, fighting against the cold night as he passed by. A key rasped in the lock ahead of him. On his right, he took a quick step into Sadie’s dark room and felt the bed. It was empty. He moved down the hall as the front door opened, expecting her.
Instead, the shape in the darkness was much too bulky.
“There now,” a man’s voice said. “Let’s get you to bed.”
Les saw red. He’d been trying to be a gentleman with Sadie, and she’d brought a man home? Some innocent. He turned on the hall light just as she giggled.
Blinking hard, he saw a man, coat and hatless, setting down his giggling wife. She wore an expensive rose-colored dress he’d never seen before, under her usual coat. Giggling again, she rocked on her heels and the man caught her under her arms.
“Are we dancing?” she asked in a drunken slur, throwing her arms around him.
Les rushed forward and grabbed for her, pulling her away. When the other man made a noise of protest and didn’t let go, Les flat-handed him in the forehead. The man’s head slanted back abruptly and he let go of Sadie.
She was dead weight, still giggling, and smelled like cigarettes and champagne.
“How much champagne did you pour down my wife?” Les protested, getting a better grip around her waist. “You do know she’s married?”
The other man held up his hands, palms-out. “I’m Peter Eyre, the manager of the Grand Russe. I’m afraid your wife overindulged this evening.”
Les stared hard at the man. A real golden chap, handsome, polished, wealthy. He wanted to take another swing just on principle, but he needed Sadie at the Grand Russe. “I’m sorry I hit you.”
Eyre rubbed his forehead, then lifted his eyebrows. “Could have been worse. I’d have hated for you to break my nose.”
Les fisted his hands, seeing red. “If you wanted sex with my wife, why didn’t you take her to your rooms? You were already at the hotel.”
“I wasn’t taking advantage. I was merely bringing her home,” Eyre said, lifting his chin arrogantly. “I felt responsible. I know Sadie’s sister rather well and fully realize how innocent the Loudon girls are. She doesn’t belong in Maystone’s any more than Alecia.”
Sadie sagged in Les’s arms. He glanced down and saw she’d gone green. “Go into the bathroom,” he ordered. “You’re going to be sick.”
She didn’t move.
“You’d better take her,” Eyre said. “Unless you want to clean your floor. Come and see me tomorrow at the hotel. We’ll discuss this.”
Les swore under his breath, but turned, his bare feet cold on the wood floor, hoisting Sadie into his arms. With as much dignity as possible, he dashed into the bathroom and set Sadie down just in time. He couldn’t hear anything over the retching, but by the time he was able to return to the hall, Eyre was long gone.
* * *
Les woke late on Monday morning. A good ten seconds passed before he remembered the scene from some six or seven hours before. He heard a faint buzzing noise down the passage. Sadie’s alarm clock. His own clock showed it was nine-thirty. Had she forgotten to turn off her clock when she left for work?
He reached for his dressing gown then remembered it had been soiled. Rubbing his hands down his arms, he went out of his bedroom and turned up the radiator, then opened Sadie’s door. The alarm clock was indeed buzzing, but Sadie was still in the bed. She’d avoided going to work again.
This was the second time, and surely Eyre would fire her now. How could he make her understand how important her job was without revealing the truth about himself?
Muttering under his breath, he went into the bathroom and turned the tap on. He filled her glass and went and set it on the table beside her small bed, then turned off the alarm clock. If she was still this soundly asleep, there was no point waking her up.
He’d have to see Peter Eyre himself, and try to save Sadie’s job, even though it was obvious she wouldn’t be in today.
Forty minutes later, he stared down a young man named Hugh Moth at the Grand Russe reception desk. “He said he’d see me this morning.” He glanced over the clerk’s head at the green-and-red stenciled designs above the key and mail racks.
“He’s very busy. You can speak to the Reading Room manager about purchasing magazines, but I think they only bring in newspapers. However, there is the newsstand just outside. Have you tried there?”
Les frowned. “How do you know I sell magazines?”
“You’re Sadie’s fellow, aren’t you? I heard her name was Sadie Rake, now. Didn’t see her downstairs this morning when I came in.”
“She’s ill, and I’m not here to sell magazines.”
“Then you should see Olga.”
He suppressed a shudder. “I definitely should not. Mr. Eyre is expecting me.”
The bones of Hugh’s wrist peeked out of his white shirt cuff as he rubbed his chin. “I will see if he is available,” he said in a doubtful voice.
Les waited while the young man made his way through a door behind him. Eyre had both office and living quarters back there. And down below was where they had found the weapons cache.
A couple of minutes later Hugh returned, followed by Peter Eyre. He wore a Savile Row suit, the image of a prosperous London businessman, right down to the lit cigarette in his fingers. No sign of a hangover.
“Please come back, Rake,” Eyre said, lifting the hinged part of the desk. He brought Les through a large room with a switchboard and a number of women at the controls to an inner office with a couple of men at desks. Then, finally, they were at Eyre’s private office.
Eyre gestured to a chair in front of his desk, then seated himself behind it. Les could feel the man attempting to diminish him and wished he could be frank. But here he was, playing the salesman with the wayward wife.
“I hope you don’t blame your wife too harshly for the events of early this morning,” Peter said. “Emmeline is a corruptor of innocents.”
“Who is Emmeline?” Les asked as he sat down.
Eyre’s desk was piled high, and not just with cigarette butts and glasses. Paperwork overflowed from two different trays. “The woman who brought Sadie to the Coffee Room, and then to the nightclub last night.”
“Sadie was at a nightclub?”
Eyre pushed papers around, found a matchbook, tossed it into a drawer. “Yes, Maystone’s, the club here, I’m afraid. Emmeline and her cousins were tossing back the bubbly and Sadie was swept up in it. I don’t think she’s used to imbibing.”
“I’ve never even seen her drink. She’s refused it before.”
“Emmeline could drive a saint to spirits,” Eyre said, tapping the photo of a blonde in a silver frame that clung to the far left edge of his desk. “I’ve known her my entire life. I thought she would marry my brother.”
“What happened?” Les asked, always ready to learn more about anyone in an important position.
“She wrote him a Dear John letter when he was posted at the front. No
el was a sniper, you see.”
“Oh?” he coaxed.
“Yes. Broke his heart. The next day he became suicidally heroic and was gassed.” Eyre’s words had slowed as he spoke.
Les winced. The effects of being gassed were bad enough that death might have been preferable. “Poor soul. Did he survive?”
Eyre toyed with his expensive lighter. “Yes, without too much lung damage. He was sent back out and it went downhill from there.”
“Why did she do it?”
He set the lighter down and his hands disappeared under his desk. “She wanted a good time and felt being tied to him was holding her back, I suppose. She’d been engaged and broken it off a couple of times already. I don’t know why he wanted her to marry him, but he said the word in a letter and she broke it off in the next one.”
Flighty bitch. “Not very patriotic to do that to a soldier.”
“She’s seen unhappier days since, to be certain. No one thought the war would last so long or cost so many boys their lives.”
Les’s cover didn’t include his service time in Russia. “Are you glad we are of an age to have missed it all, to live ordinary lives?”
Eyre lit a cigarette off the butt of his last one. “Now I have to live for two of us, Noel and me. And Emmeline’s brother died. My best friend when we were young. So I take care of her, as best I can. We’ve driven each other mad for years. It’s been torture, really. She’s eight years older than me, and doesn’t have nearly as much money as my family, these days, with all the men dead. I pay her bills when she runs out of cash for the quarter. I’m even paying for Sadie’s sister to care for Emmeline’s mother.”
“Her brother would expect it of you.”
“Yes, I suppose he would. Not marry her, with the age difference, but the rest.”
Les chuckled. He’d learned enough. “Such confidences between strangers. I must speak to you about my wife.”
“I told Olga she wouldn’t be in today. She had to make do with one less girl. It’s fine.” Eyre gestured gracefully with his cigarette. “I took Sadie on as a favor to Alecia, not because we really needed someone right away.”
Les catalogued that away, both as evidence of the appeal of the Loudon girls, and of Eyre’s character. “I’m sorry that she’s been so unreliable.”
“She only just entered the work world. Women aren’t trained to it like we are.” Eyre pushed back his chair and stood up. “Do you need her to keep working?”
“She’s not a girl who will want to stay home alone in my flat,” he lied. “She needs friends, connections, pin money. From what I’ve seen, she didn’t leave her grandfather’s house with much.”
Eyre nodded. “Olga is a good person to learn from. A reliable friend, a survivor. There are a lot of good people here.”
Les couldn’t help needling the man. “And danger too, it seems.”
“Yes, I admit we’ve had some unrest around here. Comes with the name, I suppose. We get Russian diplomats and their enemies.”
“Did they catch the people who tried to bomb the hotel?”
Eyre’s smile was rueful. “I had hoped we kept that quiet.”
Not in his world. “Sadie first came here that very day, so we heard about it.”
Eyre looked down. “The police caught most everyone.”
He played innocent. “Most?”
“There are still persons at large. But we have reason to believe that the British diplomats that were attending a command performance here were the real targets, not the Russians we have as guests. So I’m not too worried.”
Naïve? “Maybe you should be,” Les said.
“Yet you don’t want me to sack your wife,” Eyre said.
Les shrugged. “Maybe I need the money.”
Eyre’s eyelids lowered and the smoke rising from his cigarette hid his eyes from view. “Maybe you don’t love her, either.”
Chapter Twelve
Les’s lungs seemed to still, leaving him frozen. He stared at Peter Eyre. “Surely you don’t think that. We were just married.”
The hotel manager moved out from behind his desk and perched on the edge in front of Les. “I expect a shouting match from a man like you. I just admitted there could be danger to your wife here in the hotel.”
“No you didn’t,” Les said. Keep the goal in mind, man. “You said as long as the British diplomats stay out of the hotel, the Russians are safe enough. I’m not scared. I’m standing here in your office.”
“True.”
“Of course I love Sadie,” he added.
The corner of Eyre’s mouth turned up. “Such a short courtship, you two. From what I’ve heard, a decent man would be obligated to marry the girl under your circumstances. I wouldn’t blame you for not loving her. We’re men of the world. She’s a beauty, of course, but marriage?” Eyre placed his cigarette in a battered brass ashtray.
“She saved my life,” Les said. “She’s good as gold, my Sadie. What point are you trying to make?”
“I’m trying to sort you out, Rake,” Eyre said evenly. “You’re married to my chambermaid. Her sister is engaged to my head of security. You might say you’re one of the family, but you’re a puzzle. I will figure you out eventually, though.”
Les forced himself to relax in his chair. He understood that Eyre, standing over him behind the desk, was attempting to intimidate him. Playing his role, he allowed it. “You need a salesman on staff?” he asked. “Hoping to entice me away from my present post?”
“Don’t count on it,” Eyre said. “I won’t hire just anyone. I turned Alecia down initially when she asked me for work.”
That was a genuine surprise. “Why?”
Eyre settled into his perch and knocked over the photograph of Emmeline. He didn’t seem to notice. “She didn’t suit, but Sadie does. Sadie is a charmer, and we need that around here. The guests like personality at a hotel like this. And Sadie is a creature of the modern age, more so than Alecia.”
“I haven’t met her yet.”
“Lovely girl, very lovely,” Eyre said. “You should have seen her, when she borrowed gowns from the actress she worked for. But she just disappears in her everyday clothing. Not Sadie. Sadie is too vivacious ever to disappear. She’ll keep you on your toes, old thing.”
“She has so far, undeniably. I should return home and check in on her.”
“I can just imagine her sore head,” Eyre said, chuckling. “We’ll see her tomorrow.”
“Thank you for letting her keep her position,” Les said, holding out his hand.
“I have spent years cleaning up behind Emmeline. Just one more day of it.”
Les left the office after shaking Eyre’s hand, thinking he’d played it a little too dull. Should he have made a scene about his wife’s employer letting her dance with strange men in a nightclub? If Sadie had followed him to Hull because he was irresistible, behaving too colorlessly around the Grand Russe could backfire on him. The problem was, he didn’t know how to play a husband. Even to a girl as desirable as Sadie. The Secret Intelligence Service didn’t give husband lessons. Being a seducer was usually much more valuable.
* * *
Sadie woke to the smell of eggs and tea. She turned over in her bed, blinking. Les picked up the empty water glass he’d filled some hours before, and set down a tray on the bedside table. The bed dipped as he sat next to her.
“Do you think you can eat? You’ve been in bed close to a dozen hours.”
“Aren’t you at work today?” she asked, dazed.
“I was out. Filled orders for a couple of shops. Saw Peter Eyre.”
Her memory was fuzzy. “Was he here?”
“He brought you home after spending some time with you at a nightclub.”
She remembered dancing. Emmeline Plash and her cousins. “I never drink, but they kept giving me champagne and I was thirsty.”
“Once you say yes to the first couple drinks it becomes very easy to continue.”
“I found that ou
t.” She sat up. The room spun.
Les wrapped his arm around her shoulders and pushed himself back against the headboard. She cuddled up against him, trying to decipher the signals of her own body. “I want to eat, but I could get sick.”
“It’s better to try. How about a bite of toast?”
She considered that. “Yes, the thought doesn’t nauseate me.”
He handed her a buttered round and she took it, gingerly placing it between her teeth. His hand tightened around her shoulder as she bit down but he said nothing. When she dared to tilt her head in his direction, his expression was serene.
“Aren’t you angry?” she asked.
“You were foolish,” he told her. “But anyone can fall into bad company once and drink too much. Nothing happened except you risked your position again. It’s lucky that Peter Eyre came to your rescue.”
She remembered hanging on him, Emmeline doing the same. If he’d been a different kind of man, what might have happened? She shuddered. “I am so sorry. I couldn’t have behaved less like a wife had I tried to make a mistake.”
He kissed the top of her head, then made a face. “I’m not used to you smelling of cigarettes.”
“Why don’t you smoke? Most men do.”
“I did before I went to Russia. I didn’t like the tobacco there and lost the habit.”
“I see. I’m surprised I don’t come home from the Grand Russe reeking of it. Everyone smokes there.”
“I hadn’t noticed, but then, I haven’t been myself. Things do need to change, Sadie, between you and me. If we are going to go on.”
“I know you’re right,” she said. But she felt forgiven, as she sat there, leaning against him, eating her toast, even though he said nothing more. It was enough for now.
* * *
Les checked Sadie’s room on Tuesday morning before he left to meet Glass in Marylebone. The room sparkled. She’d felt much better by evening and had done some cleaning. Apparently she’d gone to work as well. He’d been afraid that she’d approach the question of what was going on with their physical relationship but thankfully she hadn’t had the energy for that. He knew where they were going, and he felt bad for her. What would happen when Glass ordered him to discard her?
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