'We'll meet on the
'I trust not. Six in the morning is not a social hour. There's a customs examination at the French frontier, but as I doubt you're travelling with tobacco or cigars the
She boarded the blue sleeping-car, its inside subdued hues of mahogany, brass and pink-shaded lamps. It was always exciting to take possession of an ingeniously-fitted sleeping-compartment. The smooth white linen sheet of her bunk was turned down, she found the washbasin slid neatly behind a mahogany panel, she admired herself in the gilt-scrolled glass, discovered the water carafe which was protected from rattle by an upholstered bracket, the panel of sponge-rubber for a watch at the bedhead. She turned a hinged brass handle expecting to find a wardrobe, and was looking into the empty compartment next door.
She rang the bell.
_'Mademoiselle desire quelquechose?'_ The conductor was a sallow young Frenchman in khaki jacket and kepi, with a military moustache.
_'Donnez un tour de clef а la porte, s'il vous plait,'_ she directed severely.
_'Je regrette, mademoiselle,'_ he excused himself hastily, producing master-key on chain from his trouser pocket. _'Ce compartiment n'est pas occupй.'_
'Certainly, mademoiselle.'
'Can you sell me a ticket for that berth to Calais?'
'Of course, mademoiselle.' The receipt book was already from his jacket pocket. 'One hundred and twenty-five francs.'
'Listen-you recall the English gentleman I spoke to on the steps?' He nodded. 'He is in the third class. Can you find him before the train starts?' He nodded again. She handed him the gold and silver coins, adding three francs for himself. 'But will you please tell the gentleman this. That the compartment is empty, and that I have bribed you with a franc to let him occupy it free of charge all the way to Calais.' Eliot would prefer to stand all night in the corridor, rather than sleep in luxury she had paid for. 'All this will go no further, of course,' she added reassuringly to the conductor.
He grinned and saluted. _'Entendu, mademoiselle.'_
She noticed he did not bother to lock the communicating door.
She sat on the bunk, still in her coat and hat, equally frightened that Eliot would fall for the ruse or that he would not. There was an unsubtle knock from the corridor. Eliot was outside, with his raincoat, rucksack and suitcase.
'I say, what a bit of luck,' he said heartily. 'I really wasn't relishing a night among people eating garlic sausage and young children of amazing energy. These railway officials are dreadfully corrupt, you know. But it was quick of you to take it up.' The train was sliding from the station.
Nancy smiled. 'We Yankees are sharp.'
'I'll turn in, as we're up early.'
'Yes, do. Sleep well.'
He found the unlocked door before the train had shrieked through the station at Mulhouse. In the morning, on the gusty quay at Calais, he remembered that he owed her for the conductor's franc.
7
'It'll be over there. Number 272. On the corner of Oxford Circus, opposite Peter Robinson's the drapers.'
'But I'm breathless!'
'Come on! While the bobby's holding up the traffic.'
'You treat the fair sex quite horribly.'
'All Englishmen do. We expect our women to ride like express trains and dance like butterflies, to organize our domestics with the efficiency of General Kitchener, to comfort us with the tenderness of Hйloise, and to laugh at our jokes like a music-hall audience.'
It was four in the afternoon of Friday, September 17, 1909. When they had reached England the previous morning, the sun gave the cliffs of Dover the sheen of an iceberg. Now the weather had changed to a malignant misty drizzle, which soaked its way through garments with the persistence of mites through cheese, and steadily cleansed the stagnant chimney-smoke of its soot for deposit on starched collars and elaborate hats.
Eliot seemed to Nancy patriotically proud of this perversity in the weather. She held an umbrella, the other hand gathering her skirt from the slimy roadway as he seized her elbow.
The London traffic was its most chaotic of the century, horsepower competing with horse. The nimble two- wheeled hansoms, the roomier four-wheeled 'growlers', the smart coupй 'fly' hired from the livery stable (seven- and-sixpence one horse, twelve-and-sixpence two), were being jostled from the streets by the taximeter motor- cabs, far faster despite the 20 miles per hour speed limit. The horse-drawn omnibuses were being ignored for the scarlet motor ones of the London General Omnibus Company, to be stopped anywhere, the 'garden seats' on the open tops advertised as freely patronized by ladies.
Stage-coaches to Hampton Court or the races churned amid excursion motors carrying a guide for the 'trippers'. Motor cars, electric or petrol, were hireable at five pounds a day. Everywhere dodged the enthusiastic, sporty cyclist. With its electric tramways and the underground 'Tube', Eliot told Nancy imposingly, London was the most convenient of cities for getting about-so long as you had no necessity to cross the road.
Still flagrantly grasping her arm, Eliot hurried Nancy along the far pavement. Number 272 was on the sweep of Oxford Circus, a doorway between a furrier's and a trunk-maker's. The lobby inside had mustard-painted stone walls, a wooden staircase going up, an iron one spiraling into the black basement. It did not seem to Nancy likely headquarters for a man with the cure of the disease which terrified the world.
Eliot ran his eyes down a painted list of firms with offices above.
'No Munyon's. And I looked them up in Kelly's Directory this morning.' He peered at the lowest line. 'That's freshly painted. Perhaps they've moved?'
He took her elbow again to a shop he had noticed on the corner, marked with gold letters OTTOMAN TOBACCONISTS.
'You can find everything about any district from a tobacconist. Its craving is common to all classes of the world, but it's so uncomplicated an article to purchase everyone stops to justify their visit with a gossip.'
The shop was tiny and aromatic. A wall of drawers like a druggist's were labelled _Raparee, Navy Plug, Havana Perfectos._ On the counter were glass boxes of round or oval cigarettes, a blue jar marked _High Dry Toast Snuff._ A black boy in turban and curly-toed slippers stood in eternal plaster deference. The Oriental atmosphere stopped with the proprietor, a wizened, pale Cockney with gold-rimmed glasses.
'Munyons?' he repeated in a thin voice. 'They've gorn.' He drew a finger across his scrawny throat. 'Gorn bust.'
Eliot and Nancy exchanged frowns. 'Do you know a Dr Crippen?'
'Know 'im, sir? I'll say. The Doctor,' he specified with respectful familiarity. 'Such a nice polite gentleman. Never smoked, mind you-said it upset 'is heart and digestion. Never took drink, neither, except for a glass of beer what you and I'd 'ardly notice, sir. Used to come in and buy Turkish cigarettes for Miss Le Neve.'
'Who might she be?' asked Nancy.
The tobacconist looked startled. 'Ain't you one of them Yankees? Funny, so was the Doctor. Though o' course you'd 'ardly think it, 'e spoke quite like an English gentleman. You one of 'is family?' Nancy shook her head hastily. 'Miss Le Neve was 'is typist, pretty young thing, always neat, luverly dark 'air. Mind, when the doctor's business went through the sieve, you could 'ave knocked me dahn wiv a fewer. Always seemed flush wiv the bees and 'oney, the doctor. Money,' he explained, responding to Nancy's blank look.
'My business with Dr Crippen is urgent,' Eliot stated. 'Where can I find him?'
'Search me, sir. 'E used to talk of an orfice what he 'ad in Shaftesbury Avenue, opposite the Palace Theatre. P'raps 'e's gorn 'ome to roost?'
'Could you describe him?' Eliot asked.
The atmosphere chilled. 'You the rozzers?'
