CHAPTER XI
[THE INQUIRY-AGENT]
Arnold Calvert occupied rooms in Bloomsbury; pleasant old rooms in a house which had been fashioned in Georgian times. It stood in a quiet street undisturbed by the noise of traffic or the shrieking of children at play. Even organ-grinders rarely came that way, as the neighbourhood was not remunerative. Consequently the house was mostly occupied by people of delicate health who disliked noise. Mrs. Varney, the landlady, was a motherly old person with rather a hard eye. At one time she had been on the stage, and traces of that period appeared in her deliberate movements and slow voice. She always seemed as though she were reciting Shakespeare with appropriate gestures, although she had played but minor parts in the dramas of the bard.
Arnold was Mrs. Varney's pet lodger. As he was on the stage she frequently gave him the benefit of her advice, and Calvert always received her stale instruction with good humour and attention. This obedience made her love him, and he benefited by having his rooms better looked after and his food better cooked than any of the other lodgers. Calvert had two rooms on the second floor, a bedroom and a pleasant sitting-room, the window of which afforded a view round the corner of the square out of which the street led. It was an oak-panelled room with a painted ceiling, and furnished in very good taste. Arnold detested the frippery with which many young men of the present day cram their rooms, and his apartment was essentially masculine. The carpet and hangings were of dull red, the chairs and sofa were upholstered in leather, and on two sides of the room were dwarf book-cases containing a well-selected library. Calvert was fond of reading--a taste he had contracted at college, and kept well abreast of the literature of the day. In one corner of the room stood a small piano. Over the mantel-piece was a collection of boxing-gloves, foils, masks, and suchlike things. Portraits of Magdalen College--which had been Calvert's Alma Mater--and of those men who had been his contemporaries, adorned the walls. Then there were many portraits of Calvert in cricketing costume, in boating dress, in cap and gown, and in some of his stage characters. Altogether a manly, pleasant room, quite the place for a studious man to dream and work in. And as Arnold lived a quiet life, he indulged in literary pursuits, as the loose papers on his desk and the presence of a typewriter demonstrated.
He was fair and handsome, with a lean clean-shaven face of the classic type. His hair was curly, and well brushed back from a high white forehead, and his eyes were blue and deep. Most people have shallow eyes like those of a bird, but there was a depth in those of Calvert which betokened a man who thought. A handsome intellectual face on the whole, and usually bright with good health, good humour, and contentment. At present, however, it was rather clouded.
The cause of this dismal expression was to be found in the presence of two men who were seated near the window. Arnold himself, in riding-dress, stood on the hearth-rug with his hands in his pockets. He had come back from a ride that morning to find two gentlemen waiting for him. "Professor Bocaros," said Mrs. Varney in the hall, when she admitted him; "he's a gentleman though shabby. But the other, called Jasher, is as vulgar as his vulgar name."
"This was rather hard on Mr. Jasher, who was not so vulgar as the landlady made out. He was as stout as Bocaros was lean--a fair, complacent, well-fed, elderly man of the Falstaff tribe. Mr. Jasher looked as though he knew a good dinner when he sat down to one, and was quite able to appreciate delicate cookery and good wines. His round fat face was red and freckled, with rather full lips, twinkling grey eyes, humorous in expression, and his hair was plentiful if rather grey. With his fat hands folded sleepily on his rotund stomach, Mr. Jasher looked anything but an inquiry-agent. Yet that was his profession, as announced by Professor Bocaros. Arnold had received the intimation calmly, though with some astonishment.
"Why do you bring this man to me?" he asked curtly.
"Do you know who I am?" asked Bocaros in his turn.
Arnold nodded. "I do. There was a certain relative of ours who sometimes spoke of you."