Darkness fell during the drive back. It took an hour to reach the town. Adam and Miles and Archie Schwert did not talk much. The effect of their drinks had now entered on that secondary stage, vividly described in temperance handbooks, when the momentary illusion of well-being and exhilaration gives place to melancholy, indigestion and moral decay. Adam tried to concentrate his thoughts upon his sudden wealth, but they seemed unable to adhere to this high pinnacle, and as often as he impelled them up, slithered back helplessly to his present physical discomfort.
The sluggish procession in which they were moving led them eventually to the centre of the town and the soberly illuminated front of the Imperial Hotel. A torrential flow of wet and hungry motor enthusiasts swept and eddied about the revolving doors.
“I shall die if I don’t eat something soon,” said Miles. “Let’s leave Agatha until we’ve had a meal.”
But the manager of the Imperial was unimpressed by numbers or necessity and manfully upheld the integrity of British hotel-keeping. Tea, he explained, was served daily in the Palm Court, with orchestra on Thursdays and Sundays, between the hours of four and six. A table d’hôte dinner was served in the dining-room from seven-thirty until nine o’clock. An à la carte dinner was also served in the grill room at the same time. It was now twenty minutes past six. If the gentlemen cared to return in an hour and ten minutes he would do his best to accommodate them, but he could not promise to reserve a table. Things were busy that day. There had been motor races in the neighbourhood, he explained.
The commissionaire was more helpful, and told them that there was a teashop restaurant called the Café Royal a little way down the High Street, next to the Cinema. He seemed, however, to have given the same advice to all comers, for the Café Royal was crowded and overflowing. Everyone was being thoroughly cross, but only the most sarcastic and overbearing were given tables, and only the gross and outrageous were given food. Adam and Miles and Archie Schwert then tried two more teashops, one kept by “ladies” and called “The Honest Injun,” a workmen’s dining-room and a fried-fish shop. Eventually they bought a bag of mixed biscuits at a cooperative store, which they ate in the Palm Court of the Imperial, maintaining a moody silence.
It was now after seven, and Adam remembered his appointment in the American bar. There, too, inevitably, was a dense crowd. Some of the “Speed Kings” themselves had appeared, pink from their baths, wearing dinner-jackets and stiff white shirts, each in his circle of admirers. Adam struggled to the bar.
“Have you seen a drunk Major in here anywhere?” he asked.
The barmaid sniffed. “I should think not, indeed,” she said. “And I shouldn’t serve him if he did come in. I don’t have people of that description in my bar. The very idea.”
“Well, perhaps he’s not drunk now. But have you seen a stout, red-faced man, with a single eyeglass and a turned-up moustache?”
“Well, there was someone like that not so long ago. Are you a friend of his?”
“I want to see him badly.”
“Well, all I can say is I wish you’d try and look after him and don’t bring him in here again. Going on something awful he was. Broke two glasses and got very quarrelsome with the other gentlemen. He had three or four pound notes in his hand. Kept waving them about and saying, ‘D’you know what? I met a mutt today. I owe him thirty-five thousand pounds and he lent me a fiver.’ Well, that’s not the way to talk before strangers, is it? He went out ten minutes ago. I was glad to see the back of him, I can tell you.”
“Did he say that—about having met a mutt?”
“Didn’t stop saying it the whole time he was in here—most monotonous.”
But as Adam left the bar he saw the Major coming out of the gentlemen’s lavatory. He was walking very deliberately, and stared at Adam with a glazed and vacant eye.
“Hi!” cried Adam. “Hi!”
“Cheerio,” said the drunk Major distantly.
“I say,” said Adam. “What about my thirty-five thousand pounds?”
The drunk Major stopped and adjusted his monocle.
“Thirty-five thousand and five pounds,” he said. “What about them?”
“Well, where are they?”
“They’re safe enough. National and Provincial Union Bank of England, Limited. A perfectly sound and upright company. I’d trust them with more than that if I had it. I’d trust them with a million, old boy, honest I would. One of those fine old companies, you know. They don’t make companies like that now. I’d trust that bank with my wife and kiddies. … You mustn’t think I’d put your money into anything that wasn’t straight, old boy. You ought to know me well enough for that. …”
“No, of course not. It’s terribly kind of you to have looked after it—you said you’d give me a cheque this evening. Don’t you remember?”
The drunk Major looked at him craftily. “Ah,” he said. “That’s another matter. I told someone I’d give him a cheque. But how am I to know it was you? … I’ve got to be careful, you know. Suppose you were just a crook dressed up. I don’t say you are, mind, but supposing. Where’d I be then? You have to look at both sides of a case like this.”
“Oh, God. … I’ve got two friends here who’ll swear to you I’m Adam Symes. Will that do?”
“Might be a gang. Besides I don’t know that the name of the chap who gave me the thousand was Adam what-d’you-call-it at all. Only your word for it. I’ll tell you what,” said the Major, sitting down in a deep armchair, “I’ll sleep on it. Just forty winks. I’ll let you know my decision when I wake up. Don’t think me suspicious, old boy, but I’ve got to be careful … other chap’s money, you know …” And he fell asleep.
Adam struggled through the crowd to the Palm
