I was working late at the Temple next day, and it was nearly seven before I got up to go home. Macgillivray had telephoned to me in the afternoon saying he wanted to see me, and suggesting dinner at the Club, and I had told him I should come straight there from my Chambers. But just after six he had rung me up again and proposed another meeting place.
"I've got some very important news for you, and want to be quiet. There's a little place where I sometimes dine—Rapaccini's, in Antioch Street. I'll meet you there at half-past seven."
I agreed, and sent a message to Chapman at the flat, telling him I would be out to dinner. It was a Wednesday night, so the House rose early. He asked me where I was dining, and I told him, but I did not mention with whom. His voice sounded very cross, for he hated a lonely meal.
It was a hot, still night, and I had had a heavy day in Court, so heavy that my private anxieties had almost slipped from my mind. I walked along the Embankment, and up Regent Street towards Oxford Circus. Antioch Street, as I had learned from the Directory, was in the area between Langham Place and Tottenham Court Road. I wondered vaguely why Macgillivray should have chosen such an out-of-the-way spot, but I knew him for a man of many whims.
The street, when I found it, turned out to be a respectable little place, boarding-houses and architects' offices, with a few antiquity shops and a picture-cleaner's. The restaurant took some finding, for it was one of those discreet establishments, common enough in France, where no edibles are displayed in the British fashion, and muslin half-curtains deck the windows. Only the doormat, lettered with the proprietor's name, remained to guide the hungry.
I gave a waiter my hat and stick, and was ushered into a garish dining-room, apparently full of people. A single violinist was discoursing music from beside the grill. The occupants were not quite the kind one expects to find in an eating-house in a side street. The men were all in evening dress with white waistcoats, and the women looked either demi-mondaines or those who follow their taste in clothes. Various eyes looked curiously at me as I entered. I guessed that the restaurant had, by one of those odd freaks of Londoners, become for a moment the fashion.
The proprietor met me half way up the room. He might call himself Rapaccini, but he was obviously a German.
"Mr. Geelvrai," he nodded. "He has engaged a private room. Vill you follow, sir?"
A narrow stairway broke into the wall on the left side of the dining-room. I followed the manager up it and along a short corridor to a door which filled its end. He ushered me into a brightly lit little room where a table was laid for two.
"Mr. Geelvrai comes often here," said the manager. "He vill be late—sometimes. Everything is ready, sir. I hope you vill be pleased."