When the show was over Shaw settled down to watch the very mixed clientele of the club and submitted to more drinks.
Those dinner-jacketed young men with more money than sense — they looked like young City men, or Guards officers; gay gallants who’d only come in for the lark and the feeling of doing something vaguely dangerous. The prosperous, ageing business-men with the sagging waistlines and the chair-heavy rumps had come along for entertainment of a different sort, and Shaw could tell from their heightened colouring and their moist lips that they’d already found some of it. His gaze lingered curiously. There was even a lesbian to complete the picture, a pathetic-looking creature, man-faced and efficient-looking, with a long cigarette-holder which she held aggressively, like a pipe, and with sensible, manly shoes, gazing with sad and rather sombre eyes at the bare shoulders of one of the young women who was dancing with a sticky palm pressed into her spine.
But it was the others who were more interesting to Shaw — much more interesting: the Negroes, some of them well-dressed and decidedly professional class, others not.
These could be MacNamara’s friends.
Shaw sipped third-rate champagne thoughtfully.
A little later the albino came up from below.
Smiling genially, he chatted here and there. He scattered his favours, but Shaw noticed that he moved more among the Negroes. One of the Africans left the room casually, his face shining with sweat. One by one, over the next ten minutes or so, the others slipped away. Shaw heard footfalls overhead, and then a dragging as though of furniture being moved about.
This must be the meeting.
He’d begun to have doubts as to whether or not ‘they’ would hold the regular meeting so soon after the Tube murder and the disappearance of MacNamara — they might think it too chancy altogether. Now, he reasoned that the fact they did seem to be sticking to routine after all must be due to their having got their hands on MacNamara before he’d had a chance to talk to anyone. They must feel pretty confident… and he had to find out what was going on upstairs.
He allowed his head to roll a little, jerked it straight. His jaw sagged. Let them think he was getting tight… after a few minutes he lurched to his feet, held on to the table for support, then started pushing his way through the crowd. Outside the door, still keeping up the unsteadiness, he found the stairs, went up, saw a door at the top, just beyond a passage with other doors, probably of bedrooms, he thought, leading off it. As he neared the door ahead of him he heard a low hum of voices. There was no one in sight, no sound at all outside that room. Perhaps he could eavesdrop this meeting. Just one chance remark picked up could give him the lead he wanted — if he was lucky; he knew he had to get all the dope he could before he alerted the Outfit in any way, for the men and women in that room would close up like clams under questioning.
He approached the door, carefully, silently, and then he heard the soft footfall. He didn’t look round; he just acted a little more drunk.
Suddenly, behind him, a voice rapped, “Just a minute.”
He turned then, slowly, and saw the albino standing at the head of the passage.
The albino asked, “Can I help you, Mr — er—?”
“Jess… Jessop.” Shaw thought the albino looked dangerous; one hand was in the pocket of his dinner-jacket, and Shaw noted the bulge which was bigger than the hand and which betrayed the small, useful automatic. No dice just yet. “Felt… sick. Stuffy — down there. I—” He belched loudly.
“Gents is on the next landing down. Just to the right of the club-room.”
“Oh… I see. Well — thanks.”
“That’s quite all right, Mr Jessop.”
The albino’s voice was soft; he stood there, looking at Shaw with pinkish eyes, his big, flabby body immobile, solid between Shaw and the room. But he was more relaxed now and he seemed convinced. Shaw turned away, went unsteadily down the stairs and into the lavatory, keeping up the act all the way. When he came out again he went straight down into the entrance hall and as he neared the hatch a voice said, “Excuse me. Your bill.”
He stopped. A squat, middle-aged woman with a cigarette dangling from her lips handed him a piece of paper. Alongside her was a big man with a battered face, like an ex-boxer. The bill was twelve pounds ten. Shaw didn’t query it. He looked up as he put his wallet away and he saw the albino padding down the stairs. Shaw turned away, making himself lurch a little, and went along the passage to the door, bumping the wall at intervals. It was raining outside, and windy, and pieces of paper were blowing along the street on the sudden gusts. Shaw kept up the act until he was well clear of Corner Crescent — just in case, though he was confident he hadn’t aroused any suspicions. He turned into the main road and then went back along another street running in rear of the club. As he came abreast of the back of the premises he identified the joint by the throb of the music still beating out loudly from what must be an open window, though he couldn’t see the window because the back of the club was built in a kind of inverted T-shape round a semienclosed yard. What looked like a service alleyway led down to the club from the street he was in.
He went along that alleyway, moving slowly and very quietly, his hand reaching inside his dinner-jacket for the gun in the shoulder-holster. Close by, a cat screamed suddenly, and Shaw jumped a little, cursing his nerves. Nothing else moved. The room where the meeting — if it was a meeting— was going on was immediately above the main club-room, and it must have a window…
If he could just get up there!
He looked around him, then got a grip on the brick wall of the alley and swung himself up on to it, dropping down noiselessly into the garden of the house adjoining the club. He went forward slowly and carefully, keeping dead quiet. When he reached the far end of the dividing wall he found an outhouse built on to the back of the premises whose garden he was in. From where he was now standing he could see the upper window of the club, dimly lit and slightly open at the top. The outhouse ran up to just below the lower window of the house, which was itself in darkness, and he didn’t think the windows were curtained either. He looked at his watch. It was only nine-forty-five. Unless the people in that house were very early bedders, those back rooms were empty. He would have to get from the outhouse to the sill of the window above, but if he could do that he thought he could swing across to the club all right, and the sill itself looked quite wide enough to sit or stand on. He’d done this kind of thing before, and he’d been trained to agility as a sailor. There was little if any risk of being seen by chance passers-by in the street beyond, or from other houses; the construction of the club premises themselves would give cover enough against that.