“I am so glad,” he said softly. “You are a very discreet young man.”
But his eyes told me that he knew I lied.
VI
The Restaurant in Antioch Street
I was working late at the Temple next day, and it was nearly seven before I got up to go home. Macgillivray had telephoned to me in the afternoon saying he wanted to see me, and suggesting dinner at the Club, and I had told him I should come straight there from my Chambers. But just after six he had rung me up again and proposed another meeting place.
“I’ve got some very important news for you, and want to be quiet. There’s a little place where I sometimes dine—Rapaccini’s, in Antioch Street. I’ll meet you there at half-past seven.”
I agreed, and sent a message to Chapman at the flat, telling him I would be out to dinner. It was a Wednesday night, so the House rose early. He asked me where I was dining, and I told him, but I did not mention with whom. His voice sounded very cross, for he hated a lonely meal.
It was a hot, still night, and I had had a heavy day in Court, so heavy that my private anxieties had almost slipped from my mind. I walked along the Embankment, and up Regent Street towards Oxford Circus. Antioch Street, as I had learned from the Directory, was in the area between Langham Place and Tottenham Court Road. I wondered vaguely why Macgillivray should have chosen such an out-of-the-way spot, but I knew him for a man of many whims.
The street, when I found it, turned out to be a respectable little place, boardinghouses and architects’ offices, with a few antiquity shops and a picture-cleaner’s. The restaurant took some finding, for it was one of those discreet establishments, common enough in France, where no edibles are displayed in the British fashion, and muslin half-curtains deck the windows. Only the doormat, lettered with the proprietor’s name, remained to guide the hungry.
I gave a waiter my hat and stick, and was ushered into a garish dining-room, apparently full of people. A single violinist was discoursing music from beside the grill. The occupants were not quite the kind one expects to find in an eating-house in a side street. The men were all in evening dress with white waistcoats, and the women looked either demimondaines or those who follow their taste in clothes. Various eyes looked curiously at me as I entered. I guessed that the restaurant had, by one of those odd freaks of Londoners, become for a moment the fashion.
The proprietor met me halfway up the room. He might call himself Rapaccini, but he was obviously a German.
“Mr. Geelvrai,” he nodded. “He has engaged a private room. Vill you follow, sir?”
A narrow stairway broke into the wall on the left side of the dining-room. I followed the manager up it and along a short corridor to a door which filled its end. He ushered me into a brightly lit little room where a table was laid for two.
“Mr. Geelvrai comes often here,” said the manager. “He vill be late—sometimes. Everything is ready, sir. I hope you vill be pleased.”
It looked inviting enough, but the air smelt stuffy. Then I saw that, though the night was warm, the window was shut and the curtains drawn. I pulled back the curtains, and, to my surprise, saw that the shutters were closed.
“You must open these,” I said, “or we’ll stifle.”
The manager glanced at the window. “I vill send a waiter,” he said, and departed. The door seemed to shut with an odd click.
I flung myself down in one of the armchairs, for I was feeling pretty tired. The little table beckoned alluringly, for I was also hungry. I remember there was a mass of pink roses on it. A bottle of champagne, with the cork loose, stood in a wine-cooler on the sideboard, and there was an unopened bottle beside it. It seemed to me that Macgillivray, when he dined here, did himself rather well.
The promised waiter did not arrive, and the stuffiness was making me very thirsty. I looked for a bell, but could not see one. My watch told me it was now a quarter to eight, but there was no sign of Macgillivray. I poured myself out a glass of champagne from the opened bottle, and was just about to drink it when my eye caught something in a corner of the room.
It was one of those little mid-Victorian corner tables—I believe they call them “what-nots”—which you will find in any boardinghouse, littered up with photographs and coral and “Presents from Brighton.” On this one stood a photograph in a shabby frame, and I thought I recognised it.
I crossed the room and picked it up. It showed a man of thirty, with short side-whiskers and ill-fitting jaw and a drooping moustache. The duplicate of it was in Macgillivray’s cabinet. It was Mr. Routh, the ex-Union leader.
There was nothing very remarkable about that, after all, but it gave me a nasty shock. The room now seemed a sinister place, as well as intolerably close. There was still no sign of the waiter to open the window, so I thought I would wait for Macgillivray downstairs.
But the door would not open. The handle would not turn. It did not seem to be locked, but rather to have shut with some kind of patent spring. I noticed that the whole thing was a powerful piece of oak, with a heavy framework, very unlike the usual flimsy restaurant doors.
My first instinct was to make a deuce of a row and attract the attention of the diners below. I own I was beginning to feel badly frightened. Clearly, I had got into some sort of trap. Macgillivray’s invitation might have been
