"Wait," said H. M. Wheezing and growling to himself, he hoisted his bulk out of the chair, and switched on a goosenecked reading lamp at the desk. A pool of green-shaded light revealed disarranged papers of official stamp sprayed over with tobacco-ash and rumpled where H. M. had put his feet on' the desk. Over the white-marble mantelpiece Bennett could see the thin, Mephistophelian portrait of Fouche. From a tall iron safe H. M. took a bottle, a syphon, and two glasses. Wherever he went, his lumbering progress seemed to upset things. In a nearsighted batlike waddling between desk and safe, he contrived to knock over a set of chessmen with which he had evidently been working out a problem, and a table of lead soldiers arranged for the solution of a puzzle in military tactics. He picked-nothing up. It was litter. It was also the paraphernalia of his weird, childlike, deadly brain. After measuring the drinks he said, "Honk, honk" with the utmost solemnity, drained his glass at a gulp, and sat back in wooden moroseness.
"Now, then," said H. M., folding his hands. 'I'm goin' to listen to you. Mind, I got work. The folks down the way he inclined his head sideways in a gesture that evidently meant another building, called New Scotland Yard, a short distance down the Embankment "they're still on hot bricks about that fella at Hampstead, the one who's got the heliograph on the hill. Let 'em wonder. Never mind. You're my nephew, and besides, son, you mentioned a woman I'm rather curious about. Well?'
"Marcia Tait?"
"Marcia Tait," agreed H. M., with a somewhat lecherous wink. "Haah. Movies. Sex plus-plus-plus. Always go to see her films." An evil glee stole over his broad face. "My wife don't like it. Why do thin women always get ferocious when you say a good word for the broad charms, hey? I admit she's plump; why not. - Funny things about Marcia Tait. I knew her father, the old general; knew him well. Had a shootin' box near me before the war. Couple of weeks ago I went to see her in that film about Lucrezia Borgia, the one that ran for months at the Leicester Square. Well, and who did I meet comin' out but old Sandival and Lady same? Lady same was snortin' into her sables. She was gettin' a bit rough on The Tait. I begged a ride home in their car. I hadda point out that Lady S. had better not walk out socially with old Tait's daughter. Accordin' to rules old Tait's daughter would go in to dinner before Lady S. Ho ho. She was nasty about it. " H. M. scowled again, and paused with his hand on the whisky-bottle. "Look here, son," he added, peering sharply across the desk; "you're not tangled up with Marcia Tait, are you?"
"Not," said Bennett, "in the way you mean, sir. I know her. She's in London."
"Do you good if you were," growled H. M. But his hand moved again, and the soda-syphon hissed. "Teach you some thing. No spirit in young 'uns nowadays. Bah. Well, go on. What's she doing over here?'
H. M.'s small, impassive eyes were disconcerting in their stare.
"If you know the background," Bennett went on, "you may know that she was on the stage first in London."
"A flop," said H. M. quietly. His eyes narrowed.
"Yes. I gather that the critics were pretty rough, and gently intimated that she couldn't act. So she went to Hollywood. By some sort of miracle a director named Rainger got hold of her; they trained her and groomed her and kept her dark for six months; and then they touched off their skyrocket. In six months she became what she is now. It was all Rainger's work, and a press agent's: fellow named Emery. But, so far as I can read it, she's got only one ambition, and that's to make London eat its own words. She's over here to take the lead in a new play."