“Wait till we get the drinks. What’s happened to everybody? This bar’s usually crammed at six o’clock.”
“Just a fluke. Damn it, I can do with a drink. Ah, here we are! But I say—seriously—you’re not going to stay here much longer, are you?”
“I can’t. I’ve got to go to-night. You know the rule here? I’ve had my room for the maximum period. My suitcases are with the hall-porter and he’s waiting for me to tell him to get me a taxi.”
“Where are you going?”
“I haven’t the slightest idea.”
“You’re not serious?”
“Perfectly.”
Jordan gave a boisterous laugh. It was well known in the club and it rasped the nerves of the more sensitive members. He was an overblown florid man, who assumed that he was immensely popular and invariably acted on the assumption. Owing to his initiative, certain rather suggestive paintings hung on the walls of the bar. He now surveyed these with heavy satisfaction for some moments, then said jocularly:
“Well, you’re a damn fine feller, Rendell! Been a member here for years, never put a foot inside it, and yet for the last few months you’ve haunted the damn place. And now you’ve got to leave—and you can’t think of anywhere to go.”
Jordan paused, then added, indicating Rendell’s glass:
“Better have the other half of that.”
“Right, but it’s my last.”
Jordan gave an order, then turned to Rendell.
“What the hell did you do yesterday? Sundays in London are the devil if you’re on your own.”
“I dined with a man I hadn’t seen for years—a man I don’t like.”
Again Jordan’s laugh jarred the room. As he spent the whole of his leisure with his mistress, the devices of others to cheat loneliness always amused him.
“Dined with a man you don’t like!” he echoed. “Who the hell was that?”
“A fellow called Marsden.”
“Never heard of him. What did you dine with him for if you don’t like him?”
“You often talk to a man you don’t like if you’re lonely, Jordan.”
After a perceptible pause, Rendell went on:
“Also, I wanted to discuss a man he knows—who happens to interest me.”
“Who’s that?”
“Ivor Trent.”
“Never heard of him either. Well, damn it, I’ll have to go. Dining at home to-night—worse luck! Still, I’ve cut it down to twice a week. You know the old saying about wives: get ’em young, tell ’em nothing, and treat ’em rough. Don’t like leaving you on your own, though. Here! I’ll tell you what! I’ll give you my paper. Save you sending for one. Here you are! Two more winners for Gordon Richards. Well, so long.”
Rendell took the paper mechanically, then watched Jordan’s exit, noting his attempt to hide unsteadiness under a swaggering gait.
When he had disappeared, Rendell muttered to himself:
“Jordan! God! Am I down to that?”
He turned over the paper, scarcely glancing at it. Suddenly a name at the top of a short paragraph made him start. He flattened the paper on the bar and read:
“Last night, Mr. Ivor Trent, the eminent novelist, was taken ill suddenly. He is now at 77, Potiphar Street, Chelsea, in a delirious condition.”
Rendell read the paragraph again.
Last night! . . . taken ill suddenly! . . . So, while he was talking to Marsden about Trent——Where did it say he was?
He glanced again at the paper.
77, Potiphar Street, Chelsea—in a delirious condition.
It was the oddest coincidence, why——
Suddenly an idea came to him.
He hesitated. Doubts, objections, advantages surged like an unruly crowd across his mind. A bit absurd, perhaps. And yet, why not? He’d got to do something. It might be interesting. Anyhow it would be a minor adventure. Yes, why not?
He strode out of the bar, ran down the stairs, got his overcoat, then said to the hall-porter:
“Get my things, Johnson, will you? And I want a taxi.”
“Yes, Mr. Rendell.” He struck a bell. . . . “Page! Get Mr. Rendell’s things—and look sharp about it. Then get a taxi.”
Two minutes later the boy returned.
“Taxi’s waiting, sir.”
“Right! Thanks. I’ll have to change a cheque. Tell the driver to go first to 77, Potiphar Street, Chelsea. Then I’ll want him to take me on somewhere afterwards. I’ll let him know where later.”
II
It was a blustering night. Winter raged on the heels of autumn. News-posters fluttered; shop signs swung violently to and fro; pavements were thronged with people hurrying to escape from a wind bristling with the menace of icy rain. The lights of Piccadilly shone hard and clear with a steely fixity.
Rendell put his feet up on the little seat opposite, then lit a cigarette. He was acting instinctively, and surrendered himself to the luxury of this knowledge. In all the major crises of his life—and he had encountered several—instinct, not reason, had prompted his actions. Then, as now, he had had no programme. An inner impulse was in command and he obeyed its orders.
Regarded rationally, his decision to go to 77, Potiphar Street was ridiculous. It would lead nowhere—and would solve nothing. He would ask some servant how Trent was, and then he would have to decide where to go and what to do. It was a trick to evade a problem which had long baffled him. To inquire about a man he did not know and had never seen! Nothing could emerge from such a futile expedition.
But although Rendell allowed these strictures to drift through his mind, he did not react to them. Three facts of deeper significance were operative in him. A book of Trent’s had impressed him more than any he had read for years. Last night he had dined with Marsden only to learn something about its author. And, now, he had discovered that, while they had been discussing him, Trent had been taken seriously ill. And he—Rendell—had happened to see a paragraph in the paper which gave not only the fact of Trent’s illness, but also his address.
Somehow, though illogically enough, this sequence seemed an indication to Rendell that Trent was destined to enter his life.
As the taxi spun along Sloane Street, Rendell remembered that he had been to Chelsea only twice previously—and that ten years separated him from his last visit. He had no memories of the place, consequently, when the taxi turned into the King’s Road, he looked out of the window with some curiosity.
Before they had proceeded many yards, however, the driver slowed up, pushed back the glass trap, and inquired:
“You said Potiphar Street, didn’t you?”
“Yes—77.”
“Don’t happen to know which side it is, I suppose?”
“Haven’t an earthly.”
“Ah well, never mind, well find it,” the man replied, with that large tolerance concerning time and space which characterises taxi-drivers, but which is seldom possessed by their fares.
At the Town Hall the taxi stopped and the driver indulged in a series of speculations and questions with a youth whose face resembled a map of vacancy. After which, he cross-examined a street vendor, who gave a lengthy list of the streets with which he was familiar, ending with the announcement that, if there were a Potiphar Street in Chelsea, he would very much like to know where it was. Finally, at Rendell’s command, the driver—most reluctantly—asked a policeman, who supplied the information instantly.
“I knew it was somewhere down there,” he said contemptuously to Rendell, with an attempt to recover professional prestige. A minute or two later they turned down a street, along which trams were crashing, then to the left down the Embankment. Rendell caught a glimpse of an old church, but almost immediately another turn to the left brought them into Potiphar Street.