Читать книгу Anybody's Pearls - Footner Hulbert - Страница 12

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Again that night, Dick and Michael Rulon sat until a late hour in the men’s restaurant, while Rulon slowly tanked up. Rulon, practically speechless, sat lowering at Dick with a sneer fixed in his hard, handsome, yellow face, while Dick did the merry and bright act. Every now and then the thought of robbing that fear-inspiring figure would poke itself forward in Dick’s mind, like a sheeted ghost with waving arms, and Dick would fall to sweating and trembling.

Aah! forget it! It can’t be done! he would say to himself.

But the ghost refused to stay laid for long.

Rulon expressed no desire to leave the hotel to-night. As midnight approached, he suddenly announced that he was going to bed.

“Want me to go up with you?” Dick heard himself saying, very, very carelessly, and immediately began to shake again.

“What’s the matter with you?” snarled Rulon. “A person would think I was incapable!”

Dick was secretly relieved. Not to-night, anyway, he whispered to himself. He walked with Rulon to the lift.

As the lift door closed behind Rulon, Dick thought: If I don’t stall off those Britishers they’ll be queering my game somehow. So he walked out to the entrance court, and hailed a taxi.

“Take me to the Racquets Court, number eleven, Pentland Mews,” he said.

Dick learned in the course of his drive that “mews” is London for stables. The great terraces of tall dwellings in London have their rows of stables behind, opening on an alley; this is the mews. With the decline of the horse, his former stables have been turned into small dwellings, or have been let out for a variety of purposes. In the centre of Pentland Mews, several of the little buildings had been thrown into one, and the roof of the upper story raised to make a raquets court for some rich man. This had subsequently become a supper club. The situation was both secluded and very central.

After the dingy, cobbled alleyway, with the garages and small work-shops opening off, the Racquets Court was supposed to take your breath away. It did Dick’s. Anything less like a crooks’ hangout you couldn’t imagine. The effect had been carefully contrived. The original front of the stables had not been changed, and the soot of a century rested on it undisturbed. You entered through a dirty, common little door—and found yourself in a luxurious fairyland.

Two gorgeous lackeys with powdered hair relieved Dick of his hat. Evidently this lower floor was given up to dressing-rooms and so on. Those wonderful tall English girls moved to and fro. They don’t know how to dress like our women, but they have a slow grace that our girls seldom acquire, and their voices are simply ravishing. Dick’s heart began to beat right away. But he was intimidated by the appalling hauteur of these exquisite girls with their boyish heads. He had not been long enough in London to learn that that, too, was a bluff which could be called.

Behind the lackeys at the foot of the narrow stairway, stood an irreproachable gentleman of foreign extraction in evening dress. Dick, in his grey worsted, began to feel very much out of place. However, the elegant gentleman conveyed no intimation by his manner that Dick was not suitably dressed. He enquired with the most charming courtesy if Dick desired to see a member.

“Yes, Lord Greatorex,” said Dick.

“What is your name, if you please?”

“Mr. Murray Hill.”

The foreign gentleman bent like a jack-knife. “Ah, Mr. Murray Hill. It is a pleasure to welcome you to the club. Lord Greatorex is expecting you. You will find him upstairs.”

Dick climbed the narrow stairway, brushing perforce against some of the lovely girls who were ceaselessly ascending and descending. When brushed against they exhaled a variety of intoxicating perfumes like different kinds of flowers.

The walls of the great room overhead were hung in unrelieved black. There were no windows, but a great skylight, dimly perceived, overhead. The floor was black, too, and highly polished. All this black made a wonderful background for the flowerlike girls. There was a line of tables all around the walls, and over each table was suspended a light with a black shade having a rosy lining, so that each table and its occupants was thrown up in high relief against the black. When dancing was going on, spotlights were thrown on the floor. There were no other lights, and the lofty ceiling of the room was as shadowy as the night sky out-of-doors.

The company was slightly mixed. That is to say; in the fashionable throng there was a certain admixture of hard-looking characters. Camouflage, Dick decided; they are introduced to persuade the swell guys that they are seeing life. Evidently the Raquets Court traded on its shady reputation. As the evening wore on, Dick, using his eyes to good advantage, perceived that there were three elements in the crowd; the smart pleasure-seekers; the alleged hard characters; the real crooks. These were not to be distinguished outwardly from the denizens of the upper world. Not a bad idea, thought Dick; the real crooks use the dummy crooks as a blind for themselves.

Dick had known of similar places at home in the land of prohibition. If I had brought Mike along with me, he thought, somebody would have picked a quarrel with him, and in the resulting fracas, all the swell guys would beat it for safety, leaving the crooks to finish their man at their leisure. None of the swell crowd would dare to speak of it afterwards. ... Well, the same thing might happen to me to-night, if I don’t watch my step.

Greatorex was sitting at a table with a blonde girl in green. As soon as Dick spoke to Greatorex, the girl unobtrusively faded. Greatorex welcomed Dick with the greatest heartiness.

“How are you, old fellow! How are you! Sit down!”

But when the slight ripple of interest attendant on Dick’s arrival had subsided, Greatorex bent a cold, black eye on him.

“Where’s Rulon?” he asked under his breath.

“Nothing doin’,” said Dick.

Greatorex swore softly. “How many nights do you expect us to sit around here waiting for you to bring him?” he demanded.

“No need for you to wait any longer,” said Dick. “He’s too wise a bird to be caught that way. He won’t venture out-of-doors after dark.”

“I thought you said you got him drunk every night,” said Greatorex.

“He gets himself drunk,” said Dick, chuckling. “Don’t need any assistance from me. But the drunker he is, the more suspicious he gets.”

“Where’s your boasted American sharpness, then?” sneered Greatorex.

“As to that,” said Dick mildly, “I don’t remember boasting any. Anyhow, I hadn’t seen this guy then. He’s American, too.”

“You’ve mulled the business!” said Greatorex angrily.

“All right,” said Dick, getting hot in return. “Put an Englishman on the job. I’ll gladly resign in his favour.”

“How about the money we laid out on you?”

“You took your chance, just as I took mine. I told you I was broke.”

“By Gad!” said Greatorex, “you needn’t think we’re going to be had as easy as that!”

He had raised his voice a little, and people were beginning to look curiously at their table. Dick wondered how long before the signal would be given for a concerted rush to be made on him. He suddenly perceived that one of the waiters in the place was no other than the redoubtable Hawkins; him of the bad teeth and the cringing manner. Yet Dick was not afraid then; he was too busy watching. I wish I had a gun! he thought.

However, no attack was made on him. A diversion was created by the arrival of a quaint figure at their table; to wit: Abrams the Jew. He was suddenly there; Dick had not seen him coming. He was all spruced up for the occasion, but still an incongruous figure in that gathering. Strange to see the sparse grey beard falling over the white shirt front. Through the hairs of his beard you could see the little black bow all askew.

“ ’Evening, Lord Greatorex ... ’Evening, Mr. Murray Hill,” he said in his oily fashion, and sat down at their table without waiting for an invitation. To a certain extent he still played the part of the fawning Jew in the presence of fine gentlemen, but it was observable that Greatorex instantly took a back seat at his coming. It was clear from whom Greatorex received his impetus.

Abrams spent several minutes in establishing his character by making fulsome inquiries as to Dick’s health, etc. He then said in that queer, thick, Yiddisher, Cockney jargon of his: “I may say, Bister Burray ’Ill, that I am familiar wiv dis unfort’nit affair of ’Is Lordzhib’s; ’Is Lordzhib ’avin’ done me the honor of askin’ my adwice. You may zhpeag cuvvite vreely before me.”

Dick described the situation to him. “I came here to discuss some new plan with Greatorex,” he said indignantly, “and he jumps down my throat, as if I had stolen the pearls.”

“Vell! Vell!” said Abrams soothingly. “You must make allowadzes, dear Bister Burray ’Ill! It is zuch a bainful affair!”

He proceeded to put Dick through a subtle cross-examination. Dick was able to answer his questions truthfully in the main, and this seeming openness convinced the Jew that Dick was still dealing squarely with the gang. Finally Abrams suggested plainly that Dick lift the pearls himself when Rulon was drunk.

“I thought of that,” said Dick. “The difficulty would be to make a getaway. He’s always unconsciously feeling of the pocket where he keeps them.”

Abrams offered to supply Dick with a seventy-two inch string of imitation pearls. Dick was instructed to call for them at Greatorex’s flat next morning. “And maybe ’Is Lordzhib vill gif you a lezzon,” added Abrams with an extraordinary fawning leer. “ ’Is Lordzhib amuses ’imself with sleight-of-’and dricks.”

Abrams then wished to order drinks. “If the zhentlemen vill so far honor me,” he said, sinking his head between his shoulders.

Presently he asked Greatorex if Mr. Murray Hill had met the Countess. Dick pricked up his ears. Greatorex shook his head.

“Vell, interdooce them, interdooce them! The Countess is ’ere to-night. She ought to ’ave an obbortunity to dank the young zhentleman who is servin ’er so faithful.”

Greatorex made no sign, but Abrams, for all his obsequiousness, had the air of one who knows that he will be obeyed.

“And now, zhentlemen, I must leab you,” he said rising. “This is no place for poor old Sab Abrabs. I only drobbed in on the chance of bein’ able to adwise my dear young friend.”

He shuffled out, bobbing and side-stepping obsequiously to anybody who looked at him.