I made it a rule, therefore, whenever it was possible, to walk to and from my engagements for the sake of exercise; and it happened in consequence, on a good many occasions when returning from a supper-party or a dance, that I passed on foot along Savile Row. There was a house in the row which intrigued me; to be more correct, there was an upper part of a house. For the ground floor and basement were occupied by a tailor, as, of course, was the case with most of the houses. But at whatever hour I returned home, the first floor was usually alight, and discreetly alight. I mean that the blinds and curtains were carefully drawn and the light only leaked out at the sides or the tops of the two large flat windows. But it was burning. I do not indeed remember more than two or three occasions when late at night that first floor was dark. Several times, however, I saw people arrive in small groups, women and men, and all of them dressed as though they had come from a theatre or an entertainment. I do not remember that I ever saw anyone going away. At my latest I was still too early for the homing of these gay pigeons.
But the most singular circumstance in connection with this mysterious apartment was its silence. No noise whatever broke from it, no sound of music, no babble of voices, never a song, never a cry. I did not notice that peculiarity for some time; but once I had noticed it, it forced itself upon me afterwards each time that I passed the house. I wanted to hear something — anything; a signal that the company assembled behind the curtains and the blinds was enjoying its presence there and was associated in some pleasant fellowship; or even in some fantastic conspiracy. But I never did, and the quiet of the place became to me in the end sinister and a little alarming.
By this time May had turned London into a garden of lilac and sunlight and it was, I think, during the third week of the month and at seven in the evening when my servant told me that a Mr. Crowther would like to see me. He was shown up, of course, at once.
“Michael, have a cocktail,” I said.
Michael shook his head with a smile.
“In a little while I shall have to, Mr. Legatt, I expect,” he said. “But to you I am still a monk.”
“Well, sit down and watch me.”
As I drank mine, he laughed.
“Do you remember, Mr. Legatt, how angry you were when I insisted on paying for your drink on the Dagonet?”
“How I hated you!” I cried.
“I reckon that I was hateful,” he replied with equanimity.
Michael had now a thick growth of hair en brosse, flecked with grey, which gave to his thin, ecclesiastical face an incongruous and comical finish.
“I wonder whether you will do something for me,” he asked, and I smiled rather sourly. I knew that question was coming, just as I knew that I should help him if I could and that there would be no possibility of doubt that I could. The pertinacity of a man with a single end in view would twist the stars from their courses.
“Of course I will,” I answered, with more of acquiescence that I should than of eagerness that I would.
“Do you know a Mr. Jack Sanford?”
“I don’t, Michael.”
It seemed astonishing to me that I didn’t, since Michael obviously wanted me to know him.
“He lives in this street.”
“He might live in Mandalay for all that means.”
Crowther got up from his chair and wandered about the room, touching an ornament here and a book there. He was very restless.
“What you want, Michael, is a Watson Number One,” I said.
Michael laughed.
“I shall have, some day, to tell you what happens to Tempters. It is not pleasant.” He turned and planted himself in front of me. “So you can’t help me.”
“I can’t introduce you to Mr. Jack Sanford, if that’s what you mean.”
He nodded his stubbly head.
“I thought that since you run about London at night you might have the right of entry there,” he said, and I sat up in my chair.
“Oh! Has he got the upper part of a house about six doors down?”
“He has.”
“Rather a mysterious place, isn’t it?”
“No,” said Crowther simply. “It’s just a gambling hell.”
I was not surprised. I had not been able to see what else it could be.
“Something like Schwegu, in fact, when they are burning an abbot?” I said.
Happily Imogen and her cousin were not present. Had they been, I should have had to listen to a chorus of: “Oh, Martin!” and reproaches that I was not nice.
“But I suppose,” I continued reluctantly, “that if you gave me a little time I could get myself presented.”
Michael’s face lit up with hope.
“And me, too?”
“Really, really,” I began, and stopped abruptly. Michael was looking at himself in the mirror above the mantelshelf, with a wry smile upon his mouth.
“I should look odd,” he said.
I was stricken with remorse. It was obvious that he wanted immensely to go to Mr. Jack Sanford’s, as obvious, indeed, as the difficulty I should have in explaining him.
“Oh, dolled up in our best gent’s dinner-jacket with trouserings to match, you’ll look fine, Michael,” I said. “Where can I find you?”
He gave me the address of a private hotel in Bayswater, shook me by the hand and went out of the door. He did not thank me for the trouble I was going to be put to. I was serving myself by any act of kindness I might do to him, though what kindness there could be in introducing a monk into a London tripot I was not at this time able to imagine, except, of course, that by some means or another he hoped there to get on to the track of his stolen sapphire.
However, I was taking Imogen that night to dinner at a restaurant and a theatre and I put the problem to her. She overleaped in a second the obstacle of an introduction and cried:
“I can manage that all right, and I am coming, too!”
“Imogen, it’s no place for you,” I protested.
“It’s more a place for me than it is for Michael,” she replied.
“Damn Michael!” said I heartily.
“Oh, Martin!” said she, and for the moment that was the end of the matter.
But two nights later she brought up to me at a dance an infinitely kind young man who regarded my elderly bufferdom of thirty years as something which demanded from him every consideration. He called me “sir,” and the title cut me to the quick.
“This is Lord Salcombe,” said Imogen.
“Imogen tells me, sir, you want one evening to trot along to Jack Sanford’s,” he said.
Did he look down at my legs wondering whether I should need two sticks to get me there?
“I should love to,” said I.
“Well, we might make a party, what? The three of us!”
“But there’s to be — —” A fourth, I was on the point of saying when a look of incredulous amazement from Imogen brought me to an inconclusive stutter. Lord Salcombe, however, put it all down to senility, if he noticed anything out of the way at all.
“We’ll dine and go to a cinema. Then we’ll drop round to Savile Row and try to draw the Muses. Pretty good, what?” And since I looked puzzled: “No? Cryptic, perhaps. I mean the nine.” He seized — really seized by both elbows, a very pretty astonished girl who was passing him. “Our dance, Esmeralda! Not your name? You don’t say! Never mind! Our dance, what?”
And in a moment they were half-way across the room. Imogen and I went downstairs to supper.
“You see, darling,” she said sweetly, “what was wanted was a little finesse. Oh, of course, you have lots of finesse, really, and I am sure when you were out in the jungle there wasn’t an elephant that could match you. But the noblest of men drop a brick from time to time, and if I hadn’t stared you would have dropped St. Paul’s.”
“How?” I asked humbly.
“The Salcombe boy wouldn’t have thanked me for Michael. When he had seen Michael he would probably have suggested that we tour London by night in
a charabanc. But if we go with the Salcombe boy by ourselves or with Pamela, we shall get the entrée to Jack Sanford’s and then we can take Michael.”
“Imogen, you’re a marvel,” I said. “You ought to be an Ambassador.”
Imogen turned over a menu card and pushed it towards me.
“Please write that down and sign it,” she said. “I’d like to show it to father.”
If I have chosen too often to present Imogen in her laughing mood, I beg your pardon. The prolonged and viscous kisses of the films teach me that reticence is out of the fashion and I shall try to amend. But, in fact, we did keep a public reticence which was the very salt of our private meetings. Passion and a lovely comradeship went hand in hand with fun in Imogen, and if my picture of her lacks those deeper qualities, set the blame upon the painter rather than upon his subject.
We went to the house in Savile Row one evening of the next week — a party of four after all. But the fourth was Pamela Brayburn. Salcombe had no doubt prepared the way, for we were admitted without question into a dark hall and thence to a lighted one where we left our hats and coats. A large and portly butler — Crowther in other days would have called him an oldy Englishy butler — ushered us up a short flight of stairs into a beautiful oblong room. The inner wall of this room was broken by double doors which stood open, disclosing a second room at the back with a long buffet. At once the silence which had so perplexed me was explained. For although there was a buzz of talk from Mr. Jack Sanford’s guests, it was contained within that inner room. The outer one with the windows on the street was the place of business, and there quiet and decorum reigned, broken only by the phrases of the tables— “En cartes,” “Baccara,” “Rien ne va plus,” “La main passe.”
Mr. Jack Sanford stepped forward and Salcombe presented us in turn. Mr. Sanford was a plump, sandy little man with a few long fair hairs running from front to back of his head. He had a white face, a button for a nose, a heavy chin and a pair of shrewd small blue eyes.
“Lord Salcombe’s friends are very welcome,” he said. “There is a buffet, as you see, and you will play or not as you feel disposed. There are two tables, you will notice, one for baccara and the other for a smaller game of chemin-de-fer. When I play myself, it is usually at the smaller table” — and with that he left us to our own devices.
We watched the big table for a little while where the play certainly ran high. I recognised one or two racing men, a proprietor of theatres, some well-known figures from the City, a Cabinet Minister and a young Frenchman who was seated by a pretty girl with a rope of pearls about her neck and some valuable rings upon her fingers. The banker was a dark, good-looking fellow with a thatch of black sleek hair and a quick eye, and it seemed to me that the luck was running against him. But I had no great opportunity of making sure, for Salcombe said:
“I think we ought to play a little at the shimmy table. I see there are some places vacant now.”
We sat down, staked a little, took the bank in turn and did very little damage either to ourselves or our fellow-players. Imogen won twenty pounds; Pamela, after losing a five-pound note, wandered off with Salcombe to the buffet. I sat by Imogen’s side, watching the clock and wondering what in the world Michael Crowther would be doing on this galley. The rooms certainly were as hot as Burma, but there must be some other attraction. But we couldn’t see it.
It was three o’clock in the morning before Imogen and I discovered it. We discovered it at the same moment. Imogen was on my left hand and the shoe of cards had come round to her. She put five pounds in as her bank and I added another five, making the whole bank ten pounds.
“Banco,” cried a voice across the table and both Imogen and I jumped as if we had been shot, to the amusement of the company. But we did not jump at the brusque voice across the table. Between the croupier’s announcement that there was a bank of ten pounds and the challenge of the man across the table we had heard another voice, Jack Sanford’s, and he was addressing the banker at the big table behind us.
“I think when you have exhausted those cards, Robin, we ought to close.”
It was the name Robin which startled us. Robin was the key word to the enigma of Crowther’s intentions. Robin must be that Robin Calhoun who had bought Crowther’s jewel for his lady-love outside the Galle Face Hotel at Colombo. Here he was taking the big bank at Jack Sanford’s little hell in Savile Row and no doubt Jack Sanford’s partner. Imogen slipped the cards quickly out of the box.
“We’ll go and look,” she said quietly, “as soon as my bank’s over.”
I agreed with a nod of the head. We would go into the room with the buffet and look for a pretty girl with a beautiful sapphire on a platinum chain. But as chance would have it, Imogen’s bank went piling up. It rose to sixty pounds and she thought it too mean a business to take her winnings and let the hand go, though she was now in a fever to have done with it. The bank ran four more times and then she lost when there was very little money staked against her. She passed the shoe, stuffed her winnings into her bag and got up. We crossed to the buffet, and with a sandwich and a glass of champagne as an excuse, we examined our fellow-guests. There were pretty girls certainly, but not one of them wore a sapphire on a platinum chain.
“We may have better luck next time,” said Imogen. She led me by the sleeve to Mr. Jack Sanford, thanked him and asked: “May we come again?” in so wistful a voice that no man could have resisted her.
“We have a little chemin-de-fer game every evening,” said Jack, his white, plump face dimpling with smiles. “And three times a week we have a table of baccara — Sundays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays. I shall be happy to see you and Mr. Legatt whenever you have the time.”
I drove Imogen to her house. As she took leave of me at the door she said:
“Your Michael’s a clever old bird. I wonder what he’s up to?”
We were both inclined to imagine that Michael had devised some subtle scheme by which his sapphire was to be restored to him without the commission of any crime. But we were quite out of our reckoning. Michael had the simplest scheme in the world, if scheme it could be called at all.
Chapter 17 The Man from Limoges
“YOU MUST SEE that he’s properly dressed, Martin! And pay attention to his shoes! If he looks like a policeman out of uniform, we shall be asked to go. I think you had better take him to your bootmaker. And then you must give him a few lessons in chemin-de-fer. He’ll have to play a little, else why did we bring him? And he must have a few pounds to play with. And above all, whatever he’s after, he must promise not to make a scene.”
Thus Imogen under the trees by the Row, on a morning in the first week of June. We had returned twice to Jack Sanford’s apartment since Salcombe had introduced us. We had not seen any girl wearing the sapphire or one answering to the name of Jill Leslie. We had learned that the young Frenchman was the Vicomte de Craix and that he had been losing heavily. We had struck up a sort of gambling-room acquaintance with him and with a few of the other habitual visitors — the pretty girl with the rope of pearls amongst them. She seemed to have a large circle of friends, for she brought a new one each time, and everybody called her Robbie. In a word, we had established ourselves and acquired the right to bring a visitor.
I followed out my instructions dutifully, and on the Wednesday appointed, Michael, dressed by my tailor and shod by my bootmaker, with his hair now long enough to lie down upon his head, met Imogen and myself in the grill-room of the Semiramis Hotel at half-past eight of the evening. We dined together and Michael was the least excited of the three of us. I think that those of us who had willy-nilly fallen under the compulsion to help him in his quest of the sapphire always found him an exciting personage — yes, even when he was most still.
“You must have no fear on my account, Miss Cloud,” he said with a smile. “I shall make no scene, and I can play chemin-de-fer and baccara, and I have money enough.”
“You are sure of that?” Imogen insisted.
&
nbsp; “Quite. Don’t forget that I had money enough to build a pagoda. And I think that I am not so far now from the end of my search but that it will last me out.”
We were curious to know how he had discovered the whereabouts of Robin Calhoun and he told us as we ate.
“I went among my old acquaintances in the City. They were of the flashy kind, I regret to say, Miss Cloud, and I had an idea that it was possible that I might pick up a line on Calhoun amongst them. I was lucky. They knew quite a lot about Jack Sanford and his partner and how well they were doing.”
Imogen was a little restless throughout the dinner and it was not until we were half-way through that she explained her restlessness. Michael was drinking water.
“Don’t you think that a glass of champagne would be helpful?” she asked; and Michael beamed at her.
“I might just as well, Miss Cloud,” he said, “since I am eating at this forbidden hour. I have laid aside my yellow robe for the time being, as I have quite a right to do, and I am committing no fault, whatever I eat and drink. But I claim the right of our race to be illogical and I’ll go on drinking water.”
He insisted that there was no demand to be made upon any of us that evening, no scandal in which our names would figure.
“I want to see my man, perhaps the lady too, so that I may know them again. I want to scrape an acquaintance with one of them at all events, if I can. I haven’t a gun or a mask or a car to make a getaway. There’ll be no thrills, Miss Cloud, to-night.”
Complete Works of a E W Mason Page 651