asylum. In two months’ time the new Lord Ingleborough would be of age and would demand an account of the trust funds. In two months—
His limbs felt leaden, like those of a swimmer climbing out of deep water. Bond Street, with its close ranks of packed and palpitating traffic, roared in his ears, beat in his face, buffeted him. Men and women jostled upon the pavement, hurrying past him, pressing upon him. The glare of shop windows, a little diffused by the light October mist, was a cruelty to his eyeballs. Nothing was real. He, with his sick apprehensions, was the only living and suffering thing in a puppet show of painted masks and jerking movements and noise. He shrank back and shot his hunted glance to left and right of him. It was then that he noticed the restaurant.
It stood on the opposite side of Conduit Street, almost directly opposite the money-lender’s premises. It was small and unpretentious, the lower half of its window discreetly veiled by a lace curtain, against which hung a framed menu. The upper half bore the legends: ‘SANDWICH BAR—COCKTAIL BAR’, silhouetted against the light within. Over the door hung a sign, bearing the single word ‘Rapallo’s’.
He glanced at his watch; it was a quarter to six. He had been over an hour screwing concessions out of the money-lender. Like an automaton he crossed Conduit Street and plunged into the restaurant. The door yielded easily to his touch and fell to behind him with a chuckling click. The place was suffocatingly warm, but it was quiet and almost deserted. A couple here and there sat eating American sandwiches at small tables. Occupying nearly half the available floor space was a vast semi-circular bar, gleaming with polished brass and mahogany. Behind it moved two barmen on soundless feet, taking down bottles from the glittering shelves, measuring, pouring, shaking. The lower murmur of conversation from the tables was punctuated by the musical tinkling of ice. Belford marched heavily up to the bar and demanded a large brandy and soda.
He drank it down and ordered a second, which he sipped slowly. He was beginning to feel better. The demure atmosphere of the place soothed him. The warmth of the brandy stole into his bones. The door clicked open and shut again with its cosy chuckle. A man joined him at the bar and asked for ‘one of the usual’. The barman smiled slyly and secretly at him, as at a well-known patron and began his dainty manipulations. ‘Like a chemist in his white coat,’ thought Belford idly. He was reminded of his visit to the chemist that afternoon and patted his overcoat pocket to assure himself that the little bottle was still there.
The other man finished his cocktail and asked for a special variety of hot sandwich. When it came, he turned politely to Belford and requested him to pass the cayenne pepper.
‘Have you tried one of these?’ he added, pointing to his plate. ‘They are a speciality here.’
Belford remembered that he had eaten next to nothing at lunch, and suddenly felt that he was hungry. He ordered the sandwich and sat absently playing with his empty glass. Presently he became aware that the stranger was talking—vague generalities about the political situation and the present state of England. He answered mechanically, trying in a subconscious way to ‘place’ the other man.
He was stout and dark, with a very high and polished skull, beneath which his features, chubby as a child’s, seemed dwarfed into insignificance. He was dressed in a dark tweed suit with a stiff wing collar, which pushed the flesh of his chin up into a little pink roll. His hands were soft and white, and moved with delicate precision. On his watch chain he carried a curious emblem or charm, which led Belford to imagine that he might belong to some esoteric order. His hat, which he had taken off and laid on the bar, was a soft black felt, rather wide in the brim, and was the only part of his costume that departed in the least from the conventional. His voice was unusual, very soft and clear, with a kind of fluting sincerity.
‘… And, of course, it is not capitalism that is the trouble,’ he was saying. ‘One cannot permanently equalise the distribution of wealth. If only those who had the money knew how to spend it. But they don’t.’
Belford agreed.
‘Rich men are dull dogs, mostly,’ said the stranger. ‘They hoard unwisely and they spend unwisely. The curse of Midas, my dear sir, was lack of imagination. If I were to be given a million pounds tomorrow, I should know how to make it yield a million pounds’ worth of enjoyment. And so would you, would you not? If you were given a million pounds tomorrow—a hundred thousand, even—fifty thousand—’
‘By God!’ said Belford. ‘I could do with it.’ His sandwich was brought and he attacked it savagely. He found it good; curious and unexpected in flavour, but appetising.
The bald-headed man was talking again, but Belford interrupted him. He felt a violent need to unburden himself to somebody.
‘Look here,’ he said. ‘How would you like to be me? I’ve got to get twenty thousand in two months’ time or blow my brains out. I can’t get anything more out of the money-lenders—I’m dipped too far already. And there’s seventy-five thousand that belongs to me—that in justice and decency belongs to me—and I can’t lay hands on it. What do you think of that?’
‘That’s hard,’ said the stout man.
‘My wife’s ten years older than I am. I married her for her money; I admit it, and she knew it. What else would a man have married a plain and sickly middle-aged woman for? Mind you, I did my bit of the bargain. It wasn’t my fault if the kid died and my wife turned into a permanent invalid. Why should she grudge me the very smell of her money? The income’s all right and helps to keep the place going, but if I even suggest she might lend me—lend me a few thousands of the capital—you’d think I was asking for her life.’
The stout man nodded sympathetically and interjected an order to the barman.
‘You’d better have one of these too,’ he added. ‘They’re another speciality. They’re not for the suburban palate, but they’d cheer up a five-year-old corpse.’
Belford said: ‘All right,’ and drink was put down before him. He lifted his glass and said, ‘Here’s how.’ The stuff was queer, certainly—intensely bitter with fire beneath the bitterness. He was not sure if he liked it. He took it down quickly, like medicine.
‘She says it will come to me when she dies, but what’s the good of that? Creaking doors hang the longest. I’ve got to have money somehow. I daresay I was an ass to speculate, but it’s done now and I can’t undo it.’ He bit savagely at his upper lip. ‘Speculation—if she knew what I needed it for, she’d leave the stuff to a cats’ home. She’s religious. Religious! Let her husband go to prison rather than—’
He checked himself.
‘Mind you, I don’t say it’s come to that. But what does she want the money for? What good’s it to her? Missionary societies and doctors’ stuff— that’s all she gets out of it. That’s a pretty wife for a man, isn’t it? What am I to her? A cross between a male nurse and an errand boy, that’s all. Forced to kowtow for fear of being cut out of her will. Running about with pills and potions and getting up at night to fill hot water bottles. Five hundred a year would give her all she wants—and she’s worth seventy-five thousand.’
‘What’s the nature of her illness?’
‘Damned if I know. Her doctor—oily hand I call him—gives a long name to it. Something to do with the kidneys or the spleen or something. And nerves, of course. They all have nerves nowadays. Also insomnia and all the rest of it. One of these damned tablets every blessed night in the year—not drug-taking, of course, oh, dear no! My wife is a religious woman. She wouldn’t take drugs. Only a harmless pill to ensure natural sleep.’
He
