NINE HUNDRED POUNDS
Bobby Ravenshaw did not spend the day at the Charing Cross Hotel waiting
for Simon; he amused himself otherwise, leaving Mudd to do the waiting.
At eleven o'clock he called at the hotel. Mr. Mudd was upstairs in Mr.
Pettigrew's room, and he would be called down.
Bobby thought that he could trace a lot of things in the porter's tone
and manner, a respect and commiseration for Mr. Mudd and perhaps not
quite such a high respect for himself and Simon. He fancied that the
hotel was beginning to have its eye upon him and Simon as questionable
parties of the _bon vivant_ type--a fancy that may have been baseless,
but was still there.
Then Mudd appeared.
"Well, Mudd," said Bobby, "hasn't he turned up yet?"
"No, Mr. Robert."
"Where on earth can he be?"
"I'm givin' him till half-past eleven," said Mudd, "and then I'm off to
Vine Street."
"What on earth for?"
"To have the hospitals circulated to ask about him."
"Oh, nonsense!"
"It's on my mind he's had an accident," said Mudd. "Robbed and stunned,
or drugged with opium and left in the street. I know London--and him as
he is! He'll be found with his pockets inside out--I know London. You
should have got him down to the country to-day, Mr. Robert, somewhere
quiet; now, maybe, it's too late."
"It's very easy to say that. I tried to, and he wouldn't go, not even to
Richmond. London seems to hold him like a charm; he's like a bee in a
bottle--can't escape."
At this moment a horrid little girl in a big hat and feathers, boots too
large for her, and a shawl, made her appearance at the entrance door,
saw the hall porter and came towards him. She had a letter in her hand.
The hall porter took the letter, looked at it, and brought it to Mudd.
Mudd glanced at the envelope and tore it open.
"10, DUKE STREET,
"LEICESTER SQUARE
"MR. MODD,
"Come at once.
"CELESTINE ROSSIGNOL."
That was all, written in an angular, old-fashioned hand and in purple
ink.
"Where's my hat?" cried Mudd, running about like a decapitated fowl.
"Where's my hat? Oh ay, it's upstairs!" He vanished, and in a minute
reappeared with his hat; then, with Bobby, and followed by the dirty
little girl trotting behind them, off they started.
They tried to question the little girl on the way, but she knew nothing
definite.
The gentleman had been brought 'ome--didn't know what was wrong with
him; the lady had given her the letter to take; that was all she knew.
"He's alive, anyway," said Bobby.
"The Lord knows!" said Mudd.
The little girl let them in with a key and, Mudd leading the way, up the
stairs they went.
Mudd knocked at the door of the sitting-room.
Madame and Cerise were there, quite calm, and evidently waiting; of
Simon there was not a trace.
"Oh, Mr. Modd," cried the old lady, "how fortunate you have received my
letter! Poor Monsieur Pattigrew----"
"He ain't dead?" cried Mudd.
No, Simon was not dead. She told. Poor Monsieur Pattigrew and a very big
gentleman had arrived over an hour ago. Mr. Pattigrew could not stand;
he had been taken ill, the big gentleman had declared. Such a nice
gentleman, who had sat down and cried whilst Mr. Pattigrew had been
placed on the sofa--taken ill in the street. The big gentleman had gone
for a doctor, but had not yet returned. Mr. Pattigrew had been put to
bed. She and the big gentleman had seen to that.
Mr. Pattigrew had recovered consciousness for a moment during this
operation and had produced a number of bank-notes--such a number! She
had placed them safely in her desk; that was one of the reasons she had
sent so urgently for Mr. Modd.
She produced the notes--a huge sheaf.
Mudd took them and examined them dazedly, hundreds and hundreds of
pounds' worth of notes; and he had only started with two hundred pounds!
"Why, there's nearly a thousand pounds' worth here," said Mudd.
Bobby's astonishment might have been greater had not his eyes rested,
from the first moment of their coming in, on Cerise. Cerise with parted
lips, a heightened colour, and the air of a little child at a play she
did not quite understand.
She was lovely. French, innocent, lovely as a flower--a new thing in
London, he had never seen anything quite like her before. The poverty of
the room, Uncle Simon, his worries and troubles, all were banished or
eased. She was music, and if Saul could have seen her he would have had
no need for David.
Had Uncle Simon added burglary to knocker-snatching, broken into a
jeweller's and disposed of his takings to a "fence," committed robbery?
All these thoughts strayed over his mind, harmless because of Cerise.
The unfortunate young man, who had fooled so long with girls, had met
the girl who had been waiting for him since the beginning of the world.
There is always that; she may be blowsy, she may be plain, or lovely
like Cerise--she is Fate.
"And here is the big gentleman's card," said Madame, taking a visiting
card from her desk, then another and another.
"He gave me three."
Mudd handed the card to Bobby, who read:
"THE HON. RICHARD PUGEOT,
"PALL MALL PLACE, ST. JAMES.
"GUARDS' CLUB."
"I know him," said Bobby. "_That's_ all right, and Uncle Simon couldn't
have fallen into better hands."
"Is, then, Monsieur Pattigrew your oncle?" asked the old lady.
"He is, Madame."
"Then you are thrice welcome here, monsieur," said she.
Cerise looked the words, and Bobby's eyes as they met hers returned
thanks.
"Come," said Madame, "you shall see him and that he is safe."
She gently opened the door leading to the bedroom, and there, in a
little bed, dainty and white--Cerise's little bed--lay Uncle Simon,
flushed and smiling and snoring.
"Poor Monsieur Pattigrew!" murmured the old lady.
Then they withdrew.
It seemed that there was another bed to be got in the house for Cerise,
and Mudd, taking charge of the patient, the ladies withdrew. It was
agreed that no doctor was wanted. It was also agreed between Bobby and
Mudd that the hotel was impossible after this.
"We must get him away to the country tomorrow," said Mudd, "if he'll
go."
"He'll go, if I have to take him tied up and bound," said Bobby. "My
nerves won't stand another day of this. Take care of those notes, Mudd,
and don't let him see them. They'll be useful getting him away. I'll be
round as early as I can. I'll see Pugeot and get the rights of the
matter from him. Good night."
Off he went.
In the street he paused for a moment, then he took a passing taxi for
the Albany.
Tozer was in, playing patience and smoking. He did not interrupt his
game for the other.
"Well, how's Uncle Simon?" asked Tozer.
"He's asleep at last after a most rampageous day."
"You look pretty sober."
"Don't mention it," said Bobby, going to a tantalus case and helping
himself to some whisky. "My nerves are all unstrung."
"Trailing after him?"
"Thank God, no!" said Bobby. "Waiting for him to turn up dead, bruised,
battered, or simply intoxicated and stripped of his money. He gave me
the slip in Piccadilly with two hundred-pound notes in his pocket. The
next place I find him was half an hour ago in a young lady's bed, dead
to the world, smiling, and with nearly a thousand pounds in bank-notes
he'd hived somehow during the day."
"A thousand pounds!"
"Yes, and he'd only started with two hundred."
"I say," said Tozer, forgetting his cards, "what a chap he must have
been when he was young!"
"When he _was_ young! Lord, I don't want to see him any younger than he
is; if this is youth, give me old age."
"You'll get it fast enough," said Tozer, "don't you worry; and this will
be a reminder to you to keep old. There's an Arab proverb that says,
'There are two things colder than ice, an old young man and a young old
man.'"
"Colder than ice!" said Bobby. "I wish you had five minutes with Uncle
Simon."
"But who was this lady--this young----"
"Two of the nicest people on earth," said Bobby, "an old lady and her
daughter--French. He saved the girl in an omnibus accident or something
in one of his escapades, and took her home to her mother. Then to-night
he must have remembered them, and got a friend to take him there. Fancy,
the cheek! What made him, in his state, able to remember them?"
"What is the young lady like?"
"She's beautiful," said Bobby; then he took a sip of whisky-and-soda and
failed to meet Tozer's eye as he put down the glass.
"That's what made him remember her," said Tozer.
Bobby laughed.
"It's no laughing matter," said the other, "at his age--when the heart
is young."
Bobby laughed again.
"Bobby," said Tozer, "beware of that girl."
"I'm not thinking of the girl," said Bobby; "I'm thinking how on earth
the old man----"
"The youth, you mean."
"Got all that money."
"You're a liar," said Tozer; "you are thinking of the girl."