Part 11 (1/2)
Trembling with eagerness I stared down at the mirror.
The periscope was perfectly focussed. The addition of the reading-gla.s.s made everything perfectly clear.
Two men in evening clothes were seated at a table. Their heads were close together, and they were talking earnestly. One was a tall, handsome boy of two-and-twenty, with a fair complexion and a reckless, dissipated cast of face. Young as he was, evil experience had marked him, and his smile was that of a much older man.
But I scarcely cast a glance on him as I stared at the coloured, moving miniature of ”Hawk Helzephron.” The man's face was deeply tanned; above the brows a magnificent dome of white forehead went up to a thatch of dark red hair--the forehead of a thinker if ever I saw one. The face below was seamed and lined everywhere. The thin nose curved out and down like that of a bird of prey. The mouth was large, well-shaped, but compressed, the chin a wedge of resolution. And, as he talked, I saw a pair of slightly protruding eyes, cold and fierce. The whole aspect of the man was ferocious and formidable to a degree.
”Watch!” whispered Danjuro.
I watched, and this is what I saw.
Into the picture came a thick-set, brutal-looking man, with a blazing diamond in his s.h.i.+rt-front. He was pa.s.sing Helzephron's table when his dinner jacket caught a wine-gla.s.s and swept it to the floor.
The hawk-faced man looked up with a scowl and said something just as the portly Nicholas and a waiter appeared in the background, as if pa.s.sing casually by.
The thick-set man bent down till his face was close to Helzephron's. He said something also, with an unpleasant smile.
Instantly Helzephron leapt up and drove his fist full into the other's face.
The fight that followed ended very speedily. The thick-set man took the blow calmly. Then, without heat, and in a fas.h.i.+on which instantly told me the truth of the matter, he set about Helzephron, hitting him where and when he chose, until a shouting crowd of guests and waiters separated the combatants and a policeman and commissionaire hurried them away from the gallery.
During all the tumult Mr. Danjuro sat quietly smoking a cigarette.
”That was Mr. Wag Ashton, the pugilist,” he remarked. ”Honourable Nicholas and the waiter saw that the honourable Helzephron struck him first. I think the Major will be resting for a day or two before Mr.
Ashton summonses him for a.s.sault.”
I felt faint with surprise and amazement.
”So you, you arranged ...”
He interrupted me. ”Now let us finish our dinner in peace,” he said.
”Some river trout, _meunier_, are coming.”
An hour afterwards, with myself at the wheel, a huge sixty horse-power Limousine, loaded with luggage and with Messrs. Danjuro and Thumbwood inside, was rolling down the Piccadilly slope.
To Penzance.
CHAPTER VIII
THE HUNTING INSTINCT IS STIMULATED BY A PROCESSION
The big car rolled down Piccadilly. She was a beauty to handle, as I discovered in the first two minutes. The very latest type of electric starter, a magnificent lighting installation--every convenience was ready to my hand. I was in an extraordinary state of mind as I steered the car through the late theatre and restaurant traffic, purely mechanically and without conscious thought about it.
The predominant sensation was one of immense overwhelming relief at the prospect of _action_. Mere office activities, the planning of guard and patrol s.h.i.+ps, conferences with pilots and officials, had been quite powerless to calm the terrible fever of unrest within me. It was commanding other people to do things, not doing them myself. I knew all the time that I should have been happier piloting one of the war-planes over the Atlantic. Now, at any rate, I was doing something real. I was actually setting out, in my own person, upon a definite quest. It might be all moons.h.i.+ne. I was well aware that many hard-headed people would have laughed at this expedition, considering the slender evidence I had.
They would have talked about ”circ.u.mstantial evidence,” the folly of pure a.s.sumption, and so forth. ”Behold this dreamer cometh!” would have been their att.i.tude.
And although I was driving the big car up Park Lane for Oxford Street and the road to the West, I did feel as if I were in a dream. My whole life had been altered by the events of the past few days, ruined for ever it might be. To-night its stream was violently diverted from its course. Everything with which I was familiar had flashed away, and I was on the brink of the fantastic and unknown. There was not a man in London setting out upon so strange an errand, under circ.u.mstances so unprecedented, as I was this night. We slid by a huge white house, set back from the railings, and with all its windows looking out over the Park. It was the London palace that Mr. Van Adams had built for himself during the last five years, and the strangeness of my affair was intensified at the sight.