Having reached this conclusion, he measured the risk and sought to forecast the aftermath. Everything was in his favor. In the situation which he meditated bringing about, he knew that, in case anything went wrong, the man's word would be worth that of a thousand women, no matter how exalted their reputations. And more than likely, he calmly figured, there would be no aftermath at all. Entrapped, and perceiving no possibility of escape Louise would acknowledge her finely-acted furtiveness to him, and, like all women who used furtiveness as a screen, would make the best of the situation—which was all that Jesse desired.
The salient feature of the plan which rapidly took form in his mind consisted in discovering when Louise and Laura should be out of each other's company, even for a short time. Jesse, not in the least balking at the idea of setting a deliberate trap because he knew that he would hold the advantage no matter what the outcome, applied himself to the solution of this by no means minor difficulty. The sight of the silent, busy Mutsu, industriously stowing his master's gear in dressers and closets, furnished Jesse with a suggestion.
He would give his Japanese man a vigil at the Savoy. The vigil might be a tedious as it was sure to be a delicate one, but Mutsu was both patient and discreet. He was a studious but alert man-boy of indeterminate age, as is characteristic of Japanese males under fifty, who had been employed as a club attendant in New York for several years and thus had added to his natural gift for discretion. He had been with Jesse for more than a year, always doing more than was ever asked of him, but studiously refraining from indicating whether he entertained any personal liking for his employer—which is another trait of a certain type of Japanese in their relationships with Occidentals.
Jesse spent a concentrated half hour in minutely instructing Mutsu as to what he desired of him. The valet was to go to the Savoy on the morrow, and, by liberally tipping the doorman at the ladies' entrance, or the carriage-opener, or whomsoever among the hotel's menials he found the most pliable or knowing, have Mrs. Laura Stedham and Miss Louise Treharne, American ladies who were guests of the hotel, pointed out to him when they should make their appearance, as they no doubt would in the course of the day, either for driving or walking. Miss Treharne would be the younger of the two. After having familiarized himself with the personal exteriors of these ladies, Mutsu was to keep vigil, on whatever pretext he might invent, in or around the hotel, until such a time as he should see the older of the two American ladies leaving the hotel alone. Whenever that should happen, the valet was instantly to telephone to Jesse at the Curzon Street apartment. The watch on the movements of the two ladies was not to terminate until Mrs. Stedham should leave the hotel unaccompanied by Miss Treharne, no matter how many days of waiting should be required before such a thing occurred.
Mutsu nodded and exhibited his dental smile when Jesse had finished his instructions. He understood the instructions perfectly, without, of course, in the least guessing at the purpose back of them.
Jesse made no mistake in appraising his Japanese man's acuteness at such work. Within less than two hours after ingratiating himself, by the use of unostentatiously distributed backsheesh, with certain of the Savoy's flunkeys, Matsu had had Laura and Louise pointed out to him as they left the hotel and entered a taxicab. He fixed their faces on his mental recording tablets, and called up Jesse on the telephone and told him of his progress.
Thenceforward, for several days, the wiry little Japanese valet hovered about the ladies' entrance of the Savoy, forestalling suspicion as to the purpose of his loitering by the bestowal of liberal pourboires upon such of the flunkeys as were in a position to notice the constancy of his vigil.
Jesse kept to his Curzon Street apartment during the day, ever on the alert for a telephone message from his valet. He chafed under the necessity—as he deemed it—which kept him indoors throughout the daylight hours and only permitted of his prowling about London at night. But he possessed a sort of Luciferian determination in the pursuit of such a purpose as that upon which he was now engaged; to the successful accomplishment of which he would have passed his days in a cellar if that had been one of the requirements of the game.
Laura had many friends, English and American, in London whom she received and called upon informally. She cared nothing for the "functionizing" of the Anglo-American social season in London, but she keenly enjoyed the unceremonious gayeties of little groups of friends. She laughingly declared that she had "trained" the people she liked to "drop in" upon her in London in the American manner of neighborliness; and she enjoyed "showing off," as she expressed it, "the beautiful Miss Treharne, from the States," as some of the chatty London weeklies had alluded to Louise. She liked to junket about, too, with Louise; and there was no lack of agreeable men keen to take them on day-long motor tours through the country, attach them for merry afternoons to houseboat parties, and so on. For her part, Louise enjoyed the contrast afforded by the shy diffidence of the young Englishmen whom she met to the exuberant breeziness of Laura's American men friends in London.