Part 4 (1/2)

The clock on the mantelpiece pointed to a quarter to eleven; the faint sound of the car had ceased. The lady of the feather boa had evidently taken her departure, and the house had resumed its cloistral silence.

He waited a moment to make sure, then he went into the hall where a huge flunkey--a new one, more curious than the others, was lounging near the door.

”My hat,” said Jones.

The thing flew, and returned with a glossy silk hat, a tortoisesh.e.l.l handled cane, and a pair of new suede gloves of a delicate dove colour.

Then it opened the door, and Jones, clapping the hat on his head, walked out.

The hat fitted, by a mercy.

CHAPTER V

THE POINT OF THE JOKE

Out in the open air and suns.h.i.+ne he took a deep satisfying breath. He felt as though he had escaped from a cage full of monkeys. Monkeys in the form of men, creatures who would servilely obey him as Rochester, but who, scenting the truth, would rend him in pieces.

Well, he was clear of them. Once back in the Savoy he would get into his own things, and once in his own things he would strike. If he could not get a lawyer to take his case up against Rochester, he would go to the police. Yes, he would. Rochester had doped him, taken his letters, taken his watch.

Jones was not the man to bring false charges. He knew that in taking his belongings, this infernal jester had done so, not for plunder, but for the purpose of making the servants believe that he, Rochester, had been stripped of everything by sharks, and sent home in an old suit of clothes; all the same he would charge Rochester with the taking of his things, he would teach this practical joker how to behave.

To cool himself and collect his thoughts before going to the Savoy, he took a walk in the Green Park.

That one word ”Tos.h.!.+” uttered by the woman, in answer to what he had said, told him more about Rochester than many statements. This man wanted a cold bath, he wanted to be held under the tap till he cried for mercy.

Walking, now with the stick under his right arm and his left hand in his trousers pocket, he felt something in the pocket. It was a coin. He took it out. It was a penny, undiscovered evidently, and unremoved by the valet.

It was also a reminder of his own poverty stricken condition. His thoughts turned from Rochester and his jokes, to his own immediate and tragic position. The whole thing was his own fault. It was quite easy to say that Rochester had led him along and tempted him; he was a full grown man and should have resisted temptation. He had let strong drink get hold of him; well, he had paid by the loss of his money, to say nothing of the way his self-respect had been bruised by this jester.

Near Buckingham Palace he turned back, walking by the way he had come, and leaving the park at the new gate.

He crossed the plexus of ways where Northumberland Avenue debouches on Trafalgar Square. It was near twelve o'clock, and the first evening papers were out. A hawker with a bundle of papers under his arm and a yellow poster in front of him like an ap.r.o.n, drew his attention; at least the poster did.

”Suicide of an American in London!” were the words on the poster.

Jones, remembering his penny, produced it and bought a paper.

The American's suicide did not interest him, but he fancied vaguely that something of Rochester's doings of the night before might have been caught by the Press through the Police news. He thought it highly probable that Rochester, continuing his mad course, had been gaoled.

He was rewarded. Right on the first page he saw his own name. He had never seen it before in print, and the sight and the circ.u.mstances made his tongue cluck back, as though checked by a string tied to its root.

This was the paragraph:

”Last night, as the 11.35 Inner Circle train was entering the Temple Station, a man was seen to jump from the platform on to the metals.

Before the station officials could interfere to save him, the unfortunate man had thrown himself before the incoming engine. Death was instantaneous.

”From papers in possession of deceased, his ident.i.ty has been verified as that of Mr. V. A. Jones, an American gentleman of Philadelphia, lately resident at the Savoy Hotel, Strand.”