Hugo- a fantasia on Modern Themes


Download 0.59 Mb.
Pdf ko'rish
bet16/31
Sana24.01.2023
Hajmi0.59 Mb.
#1115039
1   ...   12   13   14   15   16   17   18   19   ...   31
Bog'liq
hugo- a fantasia on modern themes

CHAPTER XIV
TEA
Arrived on the ground-floor, Simon managed to avoid the busy parts of the
establishment, but he happened to choose a way to Hugo's private lift which
led past the service-door of the Hugo Grand Central Restaurant. And Hugo,
although apparently in a sort of torpor, noticed it.
'Tea!' he ejaculated. 'If I could have some at once!'
And he directed Simon into the restaurant, and so came plump upon one of the
worst scenes in the entire place. The first day of the great annual sale was
closing in almost a riot, and there in the restaurant the primeval and savage
instincts of the vast, angry crowd were naturally to be seen in their crudest
form. The famous walnut buffet, eighty feet in length, was besieged by an
army of customers, chiefly women, who were competing for food in a manner
which ignored even the rudiments of politeness. It would be difficult to deny
that several scores of well-dressed ladies, robbed of their self-possession and
their lunch by delays and vexations and impositions in the departments, were
actually fighting for food. The girls behind the buffet remained nobly at their
posts, but the situation had outgrown their experience. Every now and then a
crash of crockery or crystal was heard over the din of shrill voices, and
occasionally a loud protest. Away from the buffet, on the fine floor of the
restaurant, a few waitresses hurried distracted and aimless between the tables
at which sat irate and scandalized persons who firmly believed themselves to
be dying of hunger. A number of people were most obviously stealing food,


not merely from the sideboards, but from their fellows. At a table near to the
corner in which Hugo, shocked by the spectacle, had fallen limp into a chair,
was seated an old, fierce man, who looked like a retired Indian judge, and who
had somehow secured a cup of tea all to himself. A pretty young woman
approached him, and deliberately snatched the cup from under his very nose—
and without spilling a drop. The Indian judge sprang up, roared 'Hussy!' and
knocked the table over with a prodigious racket, then proceeded to pick the
table up again.
'Is it like this everywhere?' asked Hugo of Shawn.
And Shawn nodded.
'I might have foreseen,' Hugo murmured.
'I'll try to get you some tea, sir,' Shawn said, with an attempt to be cheerful.
'Don't leave me,' begged Hugo, like a sick child. 'Don't leave me.'
'Only for a moment, sir,' said Shawn, departing.
Hugo felt that he was about to swoon, that he had suffered just as much as a
man could suffer, and that Fate was dropping the last straw on the camel's
back. His head fell forward. He was beaten for that day by too many mysteries
and too many tortures. And then he observed that the pretty young woman
who had stolen the cup of tea from the Indian judge was hastening towards
him with the cup of tea in one hand and several pieces of bread-and-butter in
the other.
'Drink this, Mr. Hugo,' she whispered, standing over him. He hesitated. 'Drink
it, I say, or must I throw it over you?'
He sipped, and sipped again, obediently.
'Good, isn't it?' she questioned.
He looked up at her. He was stronger already.
'It's very good,' he said, with conviction. 'Now a bit of bread-and-butter.
Thanks.' Yes, the excellence and power of the Hugo tea was not to be denied,
and he was deeply glad in that moment that he owned his private plantations in
Ceylon. 'Who are you, may I ask?' he demanded of his rescuer.
'If you please, sir, I'm Albert's wife.'
'Albert?'
'Albert Shawn, your detective, sir.'
'Of course you are!'
'You gave us a bedroom suite for a wedding present, sir.'
'Of course I did! By the way, where's Albert?'


'He's had an accident to his foot, and couldn't come to-day. You're less pale
than you were, sir. Take this other piece.'
Then Simon returned, empty-handed, and Lily's eye indicated to him her real
opinion of the value of a male in a crisis. She asked no questions concerning
the events which had ended in Hugo's collapse. She merely dealt with the
collapse, and in the intervals of dealing with it she explained to Simon how
she had waited and waited in the dome, and then descended and tried in vain
to enter the Safe Deposit, and been insulted by the messenger-boy, and had
finally drifted to the restaurant, where she had caught sight of Hugo and
himself, and guessed immediately that something in the highest degree
unusual had occurred.
'Come,' said Hugo at last, in curt command, 'I am better.'
He had recovered. He was Hugo again. And Simon was once more nothing but
his body servant, and Lily nothing but an ex-waitress who had married rather
well. He thanked Lily, and told her to go and look after her husband as well as
she had looked after him.
In the dome Simon ventured to show him the Evening Herald. And, having
read it, Hugo nodded his head and pressed his lips together. He had ordered
champagne and sandwiches, and was consuming them, at the same time
opening a series of yellow envelopes which lay on a table. These latter were
reports from his detective corps, which had accumulated during the day.
'Get a sheet of plain paper,' he said to Simon, 'and write this letter. Are you
ready? Yes, it will do in pencil; I even prefer it in pencil.
'"DEAR SIR,
'"I have reason to think that you may be interested in some extraordinary
information which I have in my possession concerning Camilla Tudor, who is
supposed to have been buried at Brompton Cemetery in July last year. If I am
right, perhaps you will accompany the bearer to my rooms. At present I will
not disclose my name.
'"Yours, etc."
'Put any initials you like. Address it to Louis Ravengar, Esquire. Now listen to
me. Go down to the auto garage, and choose a good man to take the note
instantly; a second man must go with him. If they bring back Ravengar, he is
to be taken to No. 6, Blair Street, shown upstairs, and brought along the
bridge-passage into the building. It will be quite dark, and he will never guess.
If necessary, he must be brought to me by force, once he is inside. Have two or
three porters in attendance to see to that. But if it's managed properly, he'll
come without a suspicion, and he'll be finely surprised when he finds that the
long passage ends in just this room. Come back to me as soon as you've


attended to that.'
'Yes, sir,' said Simon, quite mystified, but none the less enchanted to see Hugo
so actively the old Hugo.
In ten minutes he had returned, and was beginning to relate new facts which
he had learnt while downstairs.
'Stop!' said Hugo. 'Don't worry me with needless details. I know enough. And
don't ask me any questions. We can't hope to remedy the state of affairs to-day.
Nevertheless, we can do something for to-morrow. I must have Mr. Bentley,
the drapery manager, brought here before six o'clock. He must be found.'
'He is found, sir. He has shot himself in his house in Pimlico Road.'
Hugo started.
'Ah!' was all he said at first. He added dryly: 'Good! And Brown?'
'I have no news of him, sir. He's vanished.'
'Telephone down to the press department that Mr. Aked must come up to see
me at seven o'clock precisely, and, in the meantime, he must secure an extra
half-page in all to-morrow's papers.'
'Yes, sir.'
'And after closing-time the entire staff must assemble, the men in the carpet-
rooms, and the women in the central restaurant—or what's left of it. I shall
speak to them. Have notices put in the common-rooms.'
'Yes, sir.'
'And send me all the buyers from the drapery department. They must go round
and buy every silvered fox-stole in London to-night, at no matter what price.'
'Certainly, sir.'
'And telephone to Y.Z. that I shall be down there as soon as I can about these
things.'
He touched the pile of yellow envelopes. Y.Z. was the name always given to
the detectives' private room.
'Precisely, sir.'
'That's all.'
Simon Shawn gathered that his master had a very definite clue to the origin of
the unique and fatal events of that day, and that all dark places were about to
be made light with a blinding light.

Download 0.59 Mb.

Do'stlaringiz bilan baham:
1   ...   12   13   14   15   16   17   18   19   ...   31




Ma'lumotlar bazasi mualliflik huquqi bilan himoyalangan ©fayllar.org 2024
ma'muriyatiga murojaat qiling