A disappointment was in store. Beau Sejour was full. Miss Valance was awfully sorry but she had no vacancy. This was a blow. Mame’s experience, brief though it was, had been chequered; and she had duly impressed upon herself that if she adventured as far as London, England, she must keep her eyes skinned, for like every cosmopolitan city it was a natural home of the crook. Therefore she informed Miss Valance that she was a very respectable girl and wasn’t going to take a chance on any old boarding house.
From the peak of her own respectability the châtelaine of Beau Sejour applauded Mame’s wisdom. She was helpful besides. Round the corner in Montacute Square was an establishment she could recommend. It was called Fotheringay House and was kept by a lady of the name of Toogood and Miss Valance had heard her well spoken of. She might have a room to let. Anyhow there would be no harm in trying Mrs. Toogood.
Mame felt let down. It was clear from the manner of Miss Valance that she was not very hopeful that the worthy Mrs. Toogood would be able to take her in. However, Mame warmly thanked Miss Valance for her helpfulness; and then buttoning up her coat she made a resolute dive through a passage dark and narrow towards the foggy street.
In the very act of doing so, a pang keen as the blade of a knife drove through Mame. Her luggage! All she had in the world had been left outside in the taxi. The villainous looking guy who had fawned on her with a wolf’s smile as he had taken her trunk, her grip, her mackintosh, her umbrella and herself aboard his machine, had only to trundle away into the fog and she would be left high and dry with the clothes she stood up in. So sharp was the thought that Mame nearly groaned aloud. A fool trick to take a chance of that kind in a foreign city.
Coming over in the Sidonia she had read in the New York Herald of a girl who had just arrived in Paris having done what she had just done; and the girl had never seen her luggage again. And here was Mame Durrance, fed to the teeth with wise resolutions, walking into a trap with open eyes!
However, the taxi stood by the kerb just as she had left it, with her box strapped on to the front. Twopences were being registered by the meter at an alarming rate while the driver was placidly dozing. But the relief of Miss Durrance was considerable as she jumped in, after ordering Jehu, who was much less of a bandit than he looked, to trek round the corner into Montacute Square as far as Fotheringay House.
La pension Toogood was curiously like Beau Sejour, except that it had five stone steps instead of six and that one of its area railings was missing. For the rest it was able to muster a similar air of tired respectability. Painted over the fanlight of the front door, in letters that once had been white, was the historical name Fotheringay House, yet even this did not cause the mansion to look inspiring. But Mame, obsessed by the knowledge that she was literally burning money, did not pause to study details.
As she sprang out of the taxi and ran up the steps of Fotheringay House she hoped that this time she would meet better luck.
A hired girl, the twin in every detail of the slave of Beau Sejour, opened the door. Miss Durrance was in a hurry, but she could not help being amused and interested. It was her attitude to life to be amused and interested; but then who would not have been with such an apron and such a cap, with such prim politeness, with such a way of speaking? Evidently the Britishers had standardised the hired girl. She might have been a flivver or a motor cycle.
The theory applied with equal force to the London landlady. Mrs. Toogood was Miss Valance over again. But if anything, she was raised to a slightly higher power. The same dignity, the same wariness, the same ironclad gentility; but she was a widow with two children, whereas Miss Valance was a spinster with none. Her attributes, therefore, were fuller and firmer, a little more clearly defined. Mame did not make the comparison, but it was the difference between the Barbizon school and Picasso or Augustus John.