An Amiable Charlatan/Chapter 2

On seeing us the girl advanced into the room. I called Mr. Parker's attention to her and he rose at once to his feet. It was a cold evening in April and she was wearing a long coat trimmed with some dark-colored fur, and a hat also trimmed with fur, but with something blue in it. She was rather tall; she had masses of dark brown hair, a suspicion of a fringe, and deep blue eyes. She came toward us very deliberately, with the same grace of movement I had watched and admired night after night. She gave me a glance of the slightest possible curiosity as she approached. Then her father introduced us.

"This is Mr. Paul Walmsley, my dear," he said—"my daughter. Have you dined, Eve?"

She shook hands with me and smiled very charmingly.

"Hours ago," she replied. "I didn't mean to come out this evening, but I was so bored that I thought I would try and find you."

She accepted the chair I was holding and unbuttoned her cloak.

"You will have some coffee?" I begged.

"Why, that would be delightful," she agreed. "I am so glad to find you with my father, Mr. Walmsley," she continued. "I know he hates dining alone; but this evening I had an appointment with a dressmaker quite late—and I didn't feel a bit like dinner anyhow."

"You come here often, don't you?" I ventured.

"Very often indeed," she replied. "You see it is not in the least entertaining where we are staying and the cooking is abominable. Then father adores restaurants. Do tell me what you have been talking about—you two men—all the evening?"

"The truth!" Mr. Parker remarked, lighting another cigar. "My daughter knows that I speak nothing else. It is a weakness of mine. Mr. Walmsley and I were exchanging notes as to our relative professions. I told him frankly that I was an adventurer and you an adventuress. I think by now he is beginning to believe it."

She laughed very softly—almost under her breath; yet I fancied there was a note of mockery in her mirth.

"Confess that you were very much shocked, Mr. Walmsley!" she said.

"Not in the least," I assured her.

She raised her eyebrows ever so slightly.

"Confess, then," she went on, "confess, Mr. Walmsley, that in all your well-ordered life you have never heard such an admission made by two apparently respectable people before."

"How do you know," I asked, "that my life has been well-ordered?"

"Look at yourself in the glass," she begged.

Scarcely knowing what I did, I turned round in my seat and obeyed her. There is, perhaps, a certain preciseness about my appearance as well as my attire. I am tall enough—well over six feet—but my complexion still retains traces of my years in Africa and of my fondness for outdoor sports. My hair is straight and I have never grown beard or mustache. I felt, somehow, that I represented the things which in an Englishman are a little derided by young ladies on the other side of the water.

"I can't help my appearance," I said, a little crossly. "I can assure you that I am not a prig."

"Our young friend," Mr. Parker intervened, "has certainly earned his immunity from any such title. To tell you the truth, Eve, he has already been my accomplice this evening in a certain little matter. But for his help, who knows that I might not have found myself up against it? Between us we have even had a little fun out of Cullen."

Her expression changed. She seemed, for some reason, none too well pleased.

"What have you been doing?" she asked me.

"I, personally, have been doing very little indeed," I told her. "Your father entered the restaurant in a hurry about an hour ago and found it convenient to seat himself at my table and help himself to my dinner. He intrusted me, also, with a packet, which I subsequently returned to him."

"It is now," Mr. Parker declared, replying to his daughter's anxious glance, "in perfectly safe hands."

She sighed and shook her head at him.

"Daddy," she murmured plaintively, "why will you run such risks? Even Mr. Cullen isn't an absolute idiot, you know, and there might have been some one else watching."

Mr. Parker nodded.

"You are quite right, my dear," he admitted. "To tell you the truth, Cullen was really a little smarter than usual this evening. However, there's always the luck, you know—our luck! If Mr. Walmsley had turned out a different sort of man—but, then, I knew he wouldn't."

She turned her head and looked at me. She had a trick of contracting the corners of her eyes just a little, which was absolutely bewitching.

"Will you tell me why you helped my father in this way, Mr. Walmsley?"

I returned her regard steadfastly.

"It never occurred to me," I said, "to do anything else—after I had recognized him."

She smiled a little. My speech was obviously sincere. I think from that moment she began to realize why I had occupied the little table, opposite to the one where she so often sat, with such unfailing regularity.

"What about a music hall?" Mr. Parker suggested. "I hear there's a good show on right across the street here. Have you any engagement for this evening, Mr. Walmsley?"

"None at all," I hastened to assure him.

We left the place together a few minutes later and found a vacant box at the Tivoli. Arrived there, however, Mr. Parker soon became restless. He kept on seeing friends in the auditorium. We watched him, with his hat a little on the back of his head, going about shaking hands in various directions.

"How long have you been in England?" I asked my companion.

"Barely two months," she replied. "Do look at father! Wherever he goes it's the same. The one recreation of his life is making friends. The people he is speaking to to-night he has probably come across in a railroad train or an American bar. He makes lifelong friendships every time he drinks a cocktail, and he never forgets a face."

"Isn't that a little trying for you?" I asked.

She laughed outright.

"If you could only see some of the people he brings up and introduces to me!"

We talked for some time upon quite ordinary subjects. As the time passed on, however, and her father did not return, it seemed to me she became more silent. She told me very little about herself and the few personal things she said were always restrained. I was beginning to feel almost discouraged; she sat so long with a slight frown upon her forehead and her head turned away from me.

"Miss Parker," I ventured at last, "something seems to have displeased you."

"It has," she admitted.

"Will you please tell me what it is?" I asked humbly. "If I have said or done anything clumsy give me a chance, at any rate, to let you see how sorry I am."

She turned and faced me then.

"It is not your fault," she assured me; "only I am a little annoyed with my father."

"Why?"

"I think," she went on, "it is perfectly delightful that he should have made your acquaintance. It isn't that at all. But I do not think he should have made use of you in the way he did. He is utterly reckless sometimes and forgets what he is doing. It is all very well for himself, but he has no right to expose you to—to"

"To what risk did he expose me?" I demanded. "Tell me, Miss Parker—was he absolutely honest when he told me he was an adventurer?"

"Absolutely!"

"Was I, then, an accomplice in anything illegal to-night?"

"Worse than illegal—criminal!" she told me.

Now my father had been a judge and I had a brother who was a barrister; but the madness was upon me and I spoke quickly and convincingly.

"Then all I have to say about it is that I am glad!" I declared.

"Why?" she murmured, looking at me wonderingly.

"Because he is your father and I have helped him," I answered under my breath.

For a few moments she was silent. She looked at me however; and as I watched her eyes grow softer I suddenly held out my hand, and for a moment she suffered hers to rest in it. Then she drew away a little.

She was still looking at me steadfastly; but something that had seemed to me inimical had gone from her expression.

"Mr. Walmsley," she said slowly, "I want to tell you I think you are making a mistake. Please listen to me carefully. You do not belong to the order of people from whom the adventurers of the world are drawn. What you are is written in your face. I am perfectly certain you possess the ordinary conventional ideas as to right and wrong—the ideas in which you have been brought up and which have been instilled into you all your life. My father and I belong to a different class of society. There is nothing to be gained for you by mixing with us, and a great deal to be lost."

"May I not judge for myself?" I asked.

"I fear," she answered, looking me full in the face and smiling at me delightfully, "you are just a little prejudiced."

"Supposing," I whispered, "I have discovered something that seems to me better worth living for than anything else I have yet found in the world I know of—if that something belongs to a world in which I have not yet lived—do you blame me if for the sake of it I would be willing to climb down even into"

She held out her finger warningly. I heard heavy footsteps outside and the rattle of the doorhandle.

"You are very foolish!" she murmured. "Please let my father in."

Mr. Parker returned in high good humor. He had met a host of acquaintances and declared that he had not had a dull moment. As for the performance he seemed to have forgotten there was one going on at all.

"I am for supper," he suggested. "I owe our friend here a supper in return for his interrupted dinner."

"Supper, by all means!" I agreed.

"Remember that I am wearing a hat," Eve said. "We must go to one of the smaller places."

In the end we went back to Stephano's. We sat at the table at which I had so often watched Eve and her father sitting alone, and by her side I listened to the music I had so often heard while I had watched her from what had seemed to me to be an impossible distance.

Mr. Parker talked wonderfully. He spoke of gigantic financial deals in Wall Street; of operations which had altered the policy of nations; of great robberies in New York, the details of which he discussed with amazing technical knowledge.

He played tricks with the knives and forks, balanced the glasses in extraordinary fashion, and reduced our waiters to a state of numbed and amazed incapacity. Every person who entered he seemed to have some slight acquaintance with. All the time he was acknowledging and returning greetings, and all the time he talked.

We spoke finally of gambling; and he laughed heartily when I made mild fun of the gambling scare that was just then being written up in all the papers and magazines.

"So you don't believe in baccarat tables in London!" he said. "Very good! We shall see. After we have supped we shall see!"

We stayed until long past closing time. Mr. Parker continued in the highest good humor, but Eve was subject at times to moods of either indifference or depression. The more intimate note which had once or twice crept into our conversation she seemed now inclined to deprecate. She avoided meeting my eyes. More than once she glanced toward the clock.

"Haven't you an appointment to-night, father?" she asked, almost in an undertone.

"Sure!" Mr. Parker answered readily. "I have an appointment, and I am going to take you and Mr. Walmsley along."

"I am delighted to hear it!" I exclaimed quickly.

"I'll teach you to make fun of the newspapers," Mr. Parker went on. "No gambling hells in London, eh? Well, we shall see!"

To my great relief Eve made no spoken objection to my inclusion in the party. When at last we left a large and handsome motor car was drawn up outside waiting for us.

"A taxicab," Mr. Parker explained, "is of no use to me—of no more use than a hansom cab. I have to keep a car in order to slip about quietly. Now in what part of London shall we look for a gambling hell, Mr. Walmsley? I know of eleven. Name your own street—somewhere in the West End."

I named one at random.

"The very place!" Mr. Parker declared; "the very place where I have already an appointment. Get in. Say, you Londoners have no idea what goes on in your own city!"

We drove to a quiet street not very far from the Ritz Hotel. Mr. Parker led us across the pavement and we entered a block of flats. The entrance hall was dimly lit and there seemed to be no one about. Mr. Parker, however, rang for a lift, which came promptly down.

"You two will stay here," he directed, "for two or three minutes. Then the lift will come down for you."

He ascended and left us there. I turned at once to Eve, who had scarcely spoken a word during the drive from the restaurant.

"I do wish you would tell me what is troubling you, Miss Parker," I begged. "If I am really in the way of course you have only to say the word and I'll be off at once."

She held my arm for a moment. The touch of her fingers gave me unreasonable pleasure.

"Please don't think me rude or unkind," she pleaded. "Don't even think that I don't like your coming along with us—because I do. It isn't that. Only, as I told my father before supper, you don't belong! You ought not to be seen at these places, and with us. For some absurd reason father seems to have taken a fancy to you. It isn't a very good thing for you. It very likely won't be a good thing for us."

"Do please change your opinion of me a little," I implored her. "I can't help my appearance; but let me assure you I am willing to play the Bohemian to any extent so long as I can be with you. There isn't a thing in your life I wouldn't be content to share," I ventured to add.

She sighed a little petulantly. She was half-convinced, but against her will.

"You are very obstinate," she declared; "but, of course, you're rather nice."

After that I was ready for anything that might happen. The lift had descended and the porter bade us enter. We stopped at the third floor. In the open doorway of one of the flats Mr. Parker was standing, solid and imposing. He beckoned us, with a broad smile, to follow him.

To my surprise there were no locked doors or burly doorkeepers. We hung up our things in the hall and passed into a long room, in which were some fifteen or twenty people. Most of them were sitting round a chemin de fer table; a few were standing at the sideboard eating sandwiches. A dark-haired, dark-eyed, sallow-faced man, a trifle corpulent, undeniably Semitic, who seemed to be in charge of the place, came up and shook hands with Mr. Parker.

"Glad to see you, sir—and your daughter," he said, glancing keenly at them both and then at me. "This gentleman is a friend of yours?"

"Certainly," Mr. Parker replied. "I won't introduce you, but I'll answer for him."

"You would like to play?"

"I will play, certainly," Mr. Parker answered cheerfully. "My friend will watch—for the present, at any rate."

He waved us away, himself taking a seat at the table. I led Eve to a divan at the farther corner of the room. We sat there and watched the people. There were many whose faces I knew—a sprinkling of stock-brokers, one or two actresses, and half a dozen or so men about town of a dubious type. On the whole the company was scarcely reputable. I looked at Eve and sighed.

"Well, what is it?" she asked.

"This is no sort of place for you, you know," I ventured.

"Here it comes," she laughed; "the real, hidebound, respectable Englishman! I tell you I like it. I like the life; I like the light and shade of it all. I should hate your stiff English country houses, your highly moral amusements, and your dull day-by-day life. Look at those people's faces as they bend over the table!"

"Well, I am looking at them," I told her. "I see nothing but greed. I see no face that has not already lost a great part of its attractiveness."

"Perhaps!" she replied indifferently. "I will grant you that greed is the keynote of this place; yet even that has its interesting side. Where else do you see it so developed? Where else could you see the same emotion actuating a number of very different people in an altogether different manner?"

"For an adventuress," I remarked, "you seem to notice things."

"No one in the world, except those who live by adventures, ever has any inducement to notice things," she retorted. "That is why amateurs are such failures. One never does anything so well as when one does it for one's living."

"The question is arguable," I submitted.

She shrugged her shoulders.

"Every question is arguable if it is worth while," she agreed carelessly. "Look at all those people coming in!"

"I don't understand it," I confessed. "These places are against the law, yet there seems to be no concealment at all! Why aren't we raided?"

"Raids in this part of London only take place by arrangement," she assured me. "This place will reach its due date sometime, but every one will know all about it beforehand. They are making a clear profit here of about four hundred pounds a night and it has been running for two months now. When the raid comes Mr. Rubenstein—I think that is his name—can pay his five- hundred-pound fine and move on somewhere else. It's wicked—the money they make here some nights!"

"You seem to know a good deal about it," I remarked.

"The place interests father," she told me. "He comes here often."

"And you?"

"Sometimes. I am not always in the humor."

I looked at her long and thoughtfully. Her beauty was entirely the beauty of a young girl. There were no signs of late hours or anxiety in her face. She puzzled me more than ever.

"I wish I knew," I said, "exactly what you mean when you call yourself an adventuress."

She laughed.

"It means this," she explained: "To-night I have money in my purse, jewels on my fingers, a motor car to ride home in. In a week's time, if things went badly with us, I might have nothing. Then father or I, or both of us, would go out into the world to replenish, and from whomever had most of what we desired we should take as opportunity presented itself."

"Irrespective of the law?"

"Absolutely!"

"Irrespective of your sense of right and wrong?"

"My sense of right and wrong, according to your standards, does not exist."

I gave it up. She seemed thoroughly in earnest, and yet every word she spoke seemed contrary to my instinctive judgment of her. She pointed to the table.

"Look!" she whispered. "These people don't seem as though they had all that money to gamble with, do they? Look! There must be at least a thousand or fifteen hundred pounds upon the table."

It was just as she said these words that the thing happened. From somewhere among the little crowd of people gathered round the table there came the sound of heavy stamping on the floor, and in less than a moment every light in the room went out. The place was in somber darkness. Then, breaking the momentary silence, there came from outside a shrill whistle. Again there was a silence—and then pandemonium! In a dozen different keys one heard the same shout:

"The police!"

Eve gripped my arm. My matchbox was out in a moment and I struck a match, holding it high over my head. As it burned a queer little halo of light seemed thrown over the table. The door was wide open and blocked with people rushing out. The banker was still sitting in his place. At first I seemed to have the idea that Mr. Parker was by his side. Then, to my astonishment, I saw him at the opposite end of the table, standing as though he had appeared from nowhere. A stentorian voice was heard from outside:

"Ladies and gentlemen, if you please! Nothing has happened. The lights will be on again immediately."

Almost as he spoke the place was flooded with light. The faces of the people were ghastly. A babel of voices arose.

"Where are the police?"

"Where are they?"

"Who said the police?"

The little dark gentleman whose name was Rubenstein stood upon a chair.

"Ladies and gentlemen," he called out, "nothing whatever has happened—nothing! The electric lights went out owing to an accident, which I will investigate. It seems to have been a practical joke on the part of the lift man, who has disappeared. There are no police here. Please take your places. The game will proceed."

They came back a little reluctantly, as though still afraid. Then suddenly the banker's hoarse voice rang out through the room. All the time he had been sitting like an automaton. Now he was on his feet, swaying backward and forward, his eyes almost starting from his head.

"Lock the doors! The bank has been robbed! The notes have gone! Mr. Rubenstein, don't let any one go out! I tell you there was two thousand pounds upon the table. Some one has the notes!"

There was a little murmur of voices and a shriek from one of the women as she clutched her handbag. Mr. Parker, bland and benign, rose to his feet.

"My own stake has disappeared," he declared; "and the pile of notes I distinctly saw in front of the banker has gone. I fear, Mr. Rubenstein, there is a thief among us."

Mr. Rubenstein, white as a sheet, was standing at the door. He locked it and put the key in his pocket.

"Ladies and gentlemen," he said, "play is over for to-night. We are, without a doubt, the victims of an attempted robbery. The lights were turned out from the controlling switch by the lift man, who has disappeared. I will ask you to leave the room one by one; and, for all our sakes, I beg that any unknown to us will submit themselves to be searched."

There was a little angry murmur. Mr. Rubenstein looked pleadingly round.

"Ladies and gentlemen," he begged, "you will not object, I am sure. I am a poor man. Two thousand pounds of my money has gone from that table—all the money I kept in reserve to make a bank for you. If any one will return it now nothing shall be said. But to lose it all—I tell you it would ruin me!"

The perspiration stood out on his forehead. He looked anxiously round, as though seeking for sympathy. Mr. Parker came over to his side.

"Say, Mr. Rubenstein," he declared, "there isn't any one here who wants you to lose a five-pound note—that's a sure thing! But there is just one difficulty about this searching business: How can you identify your notes? If I, for instance, were to insist that I had brought with me two thousand pounds in banknotes in my pocket—which, let me hasten to assure you, I didn't—how could you deny it?"

"My notes," Mr. Rubenstein replied feverishly, "all bear the stamp of Lloyd's Bank and to-day's date. They can all be recognized."

"In that case," Mr. Parker continued, "I recommend you, Mr. Rubenstein, to insist upon searching every person here not thoroughly known to you; and I recommend you, ladies and gentlemen," he added, looking round, "to submit to be searched. It will not be a very strenuous affair, because no one can have had time to conceal the notes very effectively. I think you will all agree with me that we cannot allow our friend, who has provided us with amusement for so many nights, to run the risk of a loss like this. Begin with me, Mr. Rubenstein. No—I insist upon it. You know me better than most of your clients, I think; but I submit myself voluntarily to be searched."

"I thank you very much indeed, sir," Mr. Rubenstein declared quickly. "It is very good of you to set the example," he continued, thrusting his hand into Mr. Parker's pockets. "Ah! I see nothing here—nothing! Notes in this pocket—ten, twenty, thirty. Not mine, I see—no Lloyd's stamp. Gold! A pleasant little handful of gold, that. Mr. Parker, I thank you, sir. If you will be so good as to pass into the next room."

I brought Eve up. We were recognized as having been sitting upon the divan and Mr. Rubenstein, with a bow and extended hand, motioned to us to pass on.

"You will visit us again, I trust," he said, "when we are not so disturbed."

"Most certainly!" Mr. Parker promised in our names. "Most certainly, Mr. Rubenstein. We will all come again. Good night!"

We walked out to the landing and, descending the stairs, reached the street and stepped into the motor car that was waiting for us. It rolled off and turned into Piccadilly.

"How much was it, father?" Eve asked suddenly, from her place in the corner.

"I am not sure," Mr. Parker answered. "There is a matter of eight hundred pounds in my right shoe, and a little more than that, I think, in my left. The note down my back was, I believe, a hundred-pound one. Quite a pleasant little evening and fairly remunerative! The lift man will cost me a hundred—but he was worth it."

I sat quite still. I felt that Eve's eyes were watching me. I set my teeth for a moment; and I turned toward her, my cigarette case in my hand.

"You don't mind?" I murmured as I lit a cigarette.

She shook her head. Her eyes were still fixed upon me.

"Where can we drop you?" Mr. Parker inquired.

"If the evening is really over and there are no more excitements to come, you might put me down at the Milan Court," I told him, "if that is anywhere on your way."

Mr. Parker lifted the speaking tube to his lips and gave an order. We glided up to the Milan a few minutes later.

"I have enjoyed my evening immensely," I assured Eve impressively, "every moment of it; and I do hope, Mr. Parker," I added as I shook hands, "that you and your daughter will give me the great pleasure of dining with me any night this week. If there are any other little adventures about here in which I could take a hand I can assure you I should be delighted. I might even be of some assistance."

They both of them looked at me steadfastly. Then Eve at last glanced away, with a little shrug of the shoulders, and Mr. Joseph H. Parker gripped my hand.

"Say, you're all right!" he pronounced. "You just ring up 3771A Gerrard to-morrow morning between ten and eleven."