Their ardour was, if possible, increased by Dr Congleton’s letter. Mr Beveridge was almost certainly in London, and they knew now that they must look for a clean-shaved man. Two private inquiry detectives were at work; and on their own account they had mapped the likeliest parts of London into beats, visiting every bar and restaurant in turn, and occasionally hanging about stations and the stopping-places for ’buses.
It was dreadfully hard work, and after four days of it, even Welsh began to get a little sickened.
“Hang it,” he said in the evening, “I haven’t had a decent dinner since we came back. Mr Bunker can go to the devil for to-night, I’m going to dine decently. I’m sick of going round pubs, and not even stopping to have a drink.”
“So am I,” replied Twiddel, cordially; “where shall we go?”
“The Café Maccarroni,” suggested Welsh; “we can’t afford a West-end place, and they give one a very decent dinner there.”
The Café Maccarroni in Holborn is nominally of foreign extraction,—certainly the waiters and the stout proprietor come from sunnier lands,—and many of the diners you can hear talking in strange tongues, with quick gesticulations. But for the most part they are respectable citizens of London, who drink Chianti because it stimulates cheaply and not unpleasantly. The white-painted [pg 208] room is bright and clean and seldom very crowded, the British palate can be tickled with tolerable joints and cutlets, and the foreign with gravy-covered odds and ends. Altogether, it may be recommended to such as desire to dine comfortably and not too conspicuously.
The hour at which the two friends entered was later than most of the habitués dine, and they had the room almost to themselves. They faced each other across a small table beside the wall, and very soon the discomforts of their researches began to seem more tolerable.
“We’ll catch him soon, old man,” said Welsh, smiling more affably than he had smiled since they came back. “A day or two more of this kind of work and even London won’t be able to conceal him any longer.”
“Dash it, we must,” replied Twiddel, bravely. “We’ll show old Congleton how to look for a lunatic.”
“Ha, ha!” laughed Welsh, “I think he’ll be rather relieved himself. Waiter! another bottle of the same.”