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Hugo: A Fantasia on Modern Themes, a fiction by Arnold Bennett |
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Part 2. The Phonograph - Chapter 14. Tea |
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_ PART II. THE PHONOGRAPH CHAPTER XIV. TEA Arrived on the ground-floor, Simon managed to avoid the busy parts of the establishment, but he happened to choose a way to Hugo's private lift which led past the service-door of the Hugo Grand Central Restaurant. And Hugo, although apparently in a sort of torpor, noticed it. 'Tea!' he ejaculated. 'If I could have some at once!' And he directed Simon into the restaurant, and so came plump upon one of the worst scenes in the entire place. The first day of the great annual sale was closing in almost a riot, and there in the restaurant the primeval and savage instincts of the vast, angry crowd were naturally to be seen in their crudest form. The famous walnut buffet, eighty feet in length, was besieged by an army of customers, chiefly women, who were competing for food in a manner which ignored even the rudiments of politeness. It would be difficult to deny that several scores of well-dressed ladies, robbed of their self-possession and their lunch by delays and vexations and impositions in the departments, were actually fighting for food. The girls behind the buffet remained nobly at their posts, but the situation had outgrown their experience. Every now and then a crash of crockery or crystal was heard over the din of shrill voices, and occasionally a loud protest. Away from the buffet, on the fine floor of the restaurant, a few waitresses hurried distracted and aimless between the tables at which sat irate and scandalized persons who firmly believed themselves to be dying of hunger. A number of people were most obviously stealing food, not merely from the sideboards, but from their fellows. At a table near to the corner in which Hugo, shocked by the spectacle, had fallen limp into a chair, was seated an old, fierce man, who looked like a retired Indian judge, and who had somehow secured a cup of tea all to himself. A pretty young woman approached him, and deliberately snatched the cup from under his very nose--and without spilling a drop. The Indian judge sprang up, roared 'Hussy!' and knocked the table over with a prodigious racket, then proceeded to pick the table up again. 'Is it like this everywhere?' asked Hugo of Shawn. And Shawn nodded. 'I might have foreseen,' Hugo murmured. 'I'll try to get you some tea, sir,' Shawn said, with an attempt to be cheerful. 'Don't leave me,' begged Hugo, like a sick child. 'Don't leave me.' 'Only for a moment, sir,' said Shawn, departing. Hugo felt that he was about to swoon, that he had suffered just as much as a man could suffer, and that Fate was dropping the last straw on the camel's back. His head fell forward. He was beaten for that day by too many mysteries and too many tortures. And then he observed that the pretty young woman who had stolen the cup of tea from the Indian judge was hastening towards him with the cup of tea in one hand and several pieces of bread-and-butter in the other. 'Drink this, Mr. Hugo,' she whispered, standing over him. He hesitated. _'Drink it, I say, or must I throw it over you?'_ He sipped, and sipped again, obediently. 'Good, isn't it?' she questioned. He looked up at her. He was stronger already. 'It's very good,' he said, with conviction. 'Now a bit of bread-and-butter. Thanks.' Yes, the excellence and power of the Hugo tea was not to be denied, and he was deeply glad in that moment that he owned his private plantations in Ceylon. 'Who are you, may I ask?' he demanded of his rescuer. 'If you please, sir, I'm Albert's wife.' 'Albert?' 'Albert Shawn, your detective, sir.' 'Of course you are!' 'You gave us a bedroom suite for a wedding present, sir.' 'Of course I did! By the way, where's Albert?' 'He's had an accident to his foot, and couldn't come to-day. You're less pale than you were, sir. Take this other piece.' Then Simon returned, empty-handed, and Lily's eye indicated to him her real opinion of the value of a male in a crisis. She asked no questions concerning the events which had ended in Hugo's collapse. She merely dealt with the collapse, and in the intervals of dealing with it she explained to Simon how she had waited and waited in the dome, and then descended and tried in vain to enter the Safe Deposit, and been insulted by the messenger-boy, and had finally drifted to the restaurant, where she had caught sight of Hugo and himself, and guessed immediately that something in the highest degree unusual had occurred. 'Come,' said Hugo at last, in curt command, 'I am better.' He had recovered. He was Hugo again. And Simon was once more nothing but his body servant, and Lily nothing but an ex-waitress who had married rather well. He thanked Lily, and told her to go and look after her husband as well as she had looked after him. In the dome Simon ventured to show him the _Evening Herald_. And, having read it, Hugo nodded his head and pressed his lips together. He had ordered champagne and sandwiches, and was consuming them, at the same time opening a series of yellow envelopes which lay on a table. These latter were reports from his detective corps, which had accumulated during the day. 'Get a sheet of plain paper,' he said to Simon, 'and write this letter. Are you ready? Yes, it will do in pencil; I even prefer it in pencil. '"DEAR SIR, '"I have reason to think that you may be interested in some extraordinary information which I have in my possession concerning Camilla Tudor, who is supposed to have been buried at Brompton Cemetery in July last year. If I am right, perhaps you will accompany the bearer to my rooms. At present I will not disclose my name. '"Yours, etc." 'Put any initials you like. Address it to Louis Ravengar, Esquire. Now listen to me. Go down to the auto garage, and choose a good man to take the note instantly; a second man must go with him. If they bring back Ravengar, he is to be taken to No. 6, Blair Street, shown upstairs, and brought along the bridge-passage into the building. It will be quite dark, and he will never guess. If necessary, he must be brought to me by force, once he is inside. Have two or three porters in attendance to see to that. But if it's managed properly, he'll come without a suspicion, and he'll be finely surprised when he finds that the long passage ends in just this room. Come back to me as soon as you've attended to that.' 'Yes, sir,' said Simon, quite mystified, but none the less enchanted to see Hugo so actively the old Hugo. In ten minutes he had returned, and was beginning to relate new facts which he had learnt while downstairs. 'Stop!' said Hugo. 'Don't worry me with needless details. I know enough. And don't ask me any questions. We can't hope to remedy the state of affairs to-day. Nevertheless, we can do something for to-morrow. I must have Mr. Bentley, the drapery manager, brought here before six o'clock. He must be found.' 'He is found, sir. He has shot himself in his house in Pimlico Road.' Hugo started. 'Ah!' was all he said at first. He added dryly: 'Good! And Brown?' 'I have no news of him, sir. He's vanished.' 'Telephone down to the press department that Mr. Aked must come up to see me at seven o'clock precisely, and, in the meantime, he must secure an extra half-page in all to-morrow's papers.' 'Yes, sir.' 'And after closing-time the entire staff must assemble, the men in the carpet-rooms, and the women in the central restaurant--or what's left of it. I shall speak to them. Have notices put in the common-rooms.' 'Yes, sir.' 'And send me all the buyers from the drapery department. They must go round and buy every silvered fox-stole in London to-night, at no matter what price.' 'Certainly, sir.' 'And telephone to Y.Z. that I shall be down there as soon as I can about these things.' He touched the pile of yellow envelopes. Y.Z. was the name always given to the detectives' private room. 'Precisely, sir.' 'That's all.' Simon Shawn gathered that his master had a very definite clue to the origin of the unique and fatal events of that day, and that all dark places were about to be made light with a blinding light. _ |
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