There was no mistaking that tall, slim figure, the iron-gray hair shading to silver at the temples, the clean-cut, handsome profile, or that easy manner of a man of the world with which he crossed the dining-room.
Enoch saw Seth Van Worden rise briskly from his chair and stretch out his hand to welcome him. Then the late comer took his seat at Van Worden’s table and unfolded his napkin, with his back to Enoch, who resumed his salad dressing with the grim satisfaction a detective feels in having guessed where to find his man, and found him.
It was Jack Lamont.
Enoch was in no hurry. He raised his eyes to a waiter and quietly asked the man to bring him a copy of the Sun, which he refolded by his plate and perused leisurely over his salad, while Lamont, with his back to him, bent over his green-turtle soup, and a waiter poured for him a stiff glass of Bourbon whiskey and soda. Now and then Enoch caught fragments of their conversation, Seth Van Worden’s big voice reaching clearly to his table. Lamont’s was pitched lower and accompanied by a good deal of foreign gesture, which had become a habit with him since his various sojourns abroad, more often in Paris than elsewhere, though he knew that gay little Paris—Brussels—as well as his pocket, and Italy—at least that side of it which appealed to Jack; Florence in the height of the season, and Venice, when a favorite little countess he knew was there to welcome him in her palace so close to the Grand Canal, that you could have thrown a kiss to it in passing. Seth’s eyes brightened as he drank his wine and devoured a slice of cold duck cooked to his liking. Seth was again on his favorite topic of conversation—the Dutch—and his descent from that brave, stolid little nation. He dilated as usual upon their centuries of prowess on the high seas, their honesty, their ancient blood. Seth, being overblooded by high living, had his full share of it. Presently he launched forth to Lamont, about the Hollanders’ love of flowers, raking up from his shallow knowledge the threadbare history of the black tulip. He informed Lamont that he had picked up two rare volumes on tulip-growing, printed by hand in Rotterdam in 1600, and paid “a sound price for them, by gad,” for which he was not sorry, and had them now safe under a special glass case in his library.
“I knew a Dutch girl once,” intervened Lamont, and he bent over to confide her qualities to Seth out of hearing of the servants. “Titian hair and a skin like ivory”—Enoch overhead him declare.
Thus the best part of an hour passed. Both were speaking freely now, off their guard, the dining-room being nearly deserted.
“Weren’t—you—er—afraid he’d return?” asked Seth.
Lamont’s easy, well-modulated laugh filtered through the room.
“You don’t suppose I was fool enough not to have calculated that,” he returned. “It was a good eight hours from Milan by train—and besides there was old Cesare, my gondolier, and the little femme de chambre Annina to give me warning.”
“Good-looking?” ventured Seth.