Mason nodded.
“Fade away, Felix,” he enjoined. “You’re not in this show.”
Felixstowe left the restaurant and, crossing the courtyard, seated himself in a disreputable little two-seated car jammed between two dignified limousines, in which, after a fierce and angry toot, he sped out into the Strand. With very scant regard to the amenities of the traffic laws, and stonily deaf to the warning cries of a policeman, he threaded his way in and out of the stream of vehicles, shot across into Duncannon Street, and, with the blasphemous cries of a motor-omnibus driver still in his ears, pulled up before Jacob Pratt’s offices at the lower end of Regent Street. Jacob, who had just returned from luncheon, welcomed him with a nod and indicated the easy-chair, into which the young man sank with the air of one who has earned repose.
“Old top,” he announced, “they’re getting ready to put it across you.”
“Who are?” Jacob asked.
“The great Dane Montague, fresh from his city triumphs, Joe Hartwell, the American shark, and Philip Mason.”
Jacob smiled a little contemptuously.
“I dare say they’d like to do me a bad turn if they could!”
The young man extended his hand for Jacob’s case, took out a cigarette and tapped it upon the desk, lit it, and subsided still farther into the depths of his chair.
“Listen,” he continued, “this is no idle gossip I bring you. Five minutes ago I left the trio at the Milan, discussing over several empty bottles of Pommery and a badly hurt bottle of ’68 brandy no less a subject than your undoing.”