“Can you get hold of her for me?”
“Yes, I think I know where to find her; but you’d better understand that she’s not at all the ordinary sort of street-crawler. If she’s your woman, the description you gave was a bit misleading. She is most often about with Horace Mandleham, the painter chap, nowadays. Come round to Duke’s with me, and I dare say we shall find her.”
Ellery knew about Duke’s, of course; but he had never been there. Just at the moment, it was the latest thing in night clubs in London, and everybody who fancied himself or herself as a bit in advance of other folk was keen to go there. Ellery was not advanced, and it took some persuasion to carry him along. He seemed to think that Jaxon ought to cut out his prize for him from under the guns of Duke’s and bring her home in tow. But Jaxon said he could find her, but he couldn’t possibly bring her. Finally, Ellery agreed to go. After all, he reflected, it was all in the day’s work. He had known what sort of man Walter Brooklyn was; and he must not complain if the task of clearing up his character meant going into some queer places.
Duke’s certainly did not rely for its popularity on external display. It was approached by three flights of narrow and rickety stairs, and the visitors had to satisfy two rather seedy-looking janitors, not in uniform, at top and bottom. And, when they entered the Club itself, Ellery had a still greater surprise. The famous Duke’s consisted of one very long low room—or rather of three long, low attics which had been amateurishly knocked into one. The decorations were old and faded, and the places where the partitions had been were still marked by patches of new paper pasted on to hide the rents in the old. The ventilation was abominable, and what windows there were did not seem to have been cleaned for months. The furniture—a few seedy divans and a large number of common Windsor chairs and kitchen tables—seemed to have been picked up at second-hand from some very inferior dealer. Tables and floor were stained with countless spillings of food and drink, and a thick cloud of tobacco smoke made it quite impossible to see any distance along the room. There was only one redeeming feature, and Ellery’s eye fell upon it almost as soon as he entered the place. Near the door was a magnificent grand piano, on which some one was playing really well an arrangement from Borodine’s Prince Igor.
Jaxon drew Ellery to a vacant table. “We’ll sit down here and order something, and then in a moment or two, I’ll go round and spy out the land,” he said. “From here we shall see any one who goes out. And, by Jove, there’s one of the six Kittys—not the one I told you about. I shouldn’t be surprised if we found the whole half-dozen before the evening’s out. Everybody looks in here just now.”
Ellery felt very uncomfortable when he was left alone to sip his gin and water while Jaxon went round the room, exchanging a few words with friends at several of the tables. But soon his friend came back to report. “No, she’s not here now; but I’ve spotted another Kitty for you. I forgot her: she makes the seventh on our list, and you’d better have a word with the two who are here. Bring your drink across, and I’ll introduce you to that one over there. She’s Kitty Turner, and the chap she’s with is a fellow from Bloomsbury way called Parkinson—a civil servant, I believe. I’ll do the talking, or most of it. You just ask her if she knows Walter Brooklyn when you get a chance.”
They drew a blank at the conversation. Kitty Turner was certainly a very bright lady, laughing immoderately both at her own and at Jaxon’s jokes, and, it seemed to Ellery, a good deal relieved to get a rest from her tête-à-tête with the gloomy fellow who was sitting by her side. He, at any rate, seemed to take his pleasures sadly. Indeed, it struck Ellery, as he looked round the room, that very few of the people there seemed to be really enjoying themselves. The women were cheerful, but there was something forced about the gaiety of many of them; and some of the men seemed to need a deal of cheering up. Ellery found himself wondering why on earth so many people came to this sort of place, if they did not even find it amusing. He at any rate was not amused, even as Jaxon seemed to be, by regarding the place as a sort of psychological study. He had come there for a definite purpose; and, as soon as he had satisfied himself that Kitty Turner knew nothing of Walter Brooklyn, he was ready to move on. A signal soon brought Jaxon to his feet, and they strolled across the room to try the next Kitty on the list.
Kitty Laurenson did know Walter Brooklyn, but not to any degree of intimacy. She had met him a few times, and Ellery rather gathered that, in her opinion, he had been less attentive than he should have been to her charms. She had certainly not seen him on Tuesday, or indeed for weeks past. Ellery liked her even less than the other; for her attitude towards him seemed to be strictly professional, and, as soon as she was sure that he could not be fascinated, she showed him plainly that the sooner he went away the better he would please her. Ellery again gave Jaxon the signal, and they left her table. They were just discussing whether it was worth while to wait a time in the hope that some more Kittys might turn up, when Jaxon said suddenly, “By Jove, here she comes, and alone too. We’re in luck.”
Ellery turned, and saw entering the room a stout, rather coarse-looking woman of about forty or forty-five, so far as he could judge through the intervening smoke, and despite the artificial obstructions which the lady herself had placed in the way of those who might be minded to inspect her too closely. He saw at once that she was a person to be reckoned with. The face was powerful, and the pair of keen black eyes which were glancing penetratingly round the room, as if in search of some one, were not easily to be forgotten. The figure was without dignity; but the woman’s expression gave it the lie. Certainly she was more likely to have owned the Russian Archduke than to have been owned by him.
Jaxon left Ellery standing by himself and went up to her. She greeted him pleasantly. “Oh, Will, I was looking for Horace. Do you know if he is here?”