At that instant Spencer saw Bower raise his hat to the two women. They hurried inside the theater, and their escort turned to reënter his motor. The American had learned what he wanted to know. Miss Jaques had shaken off her presumed admirer, and Miss Wynton had aided and abetted her in the deed.
“You don’t say!” he exclaimed, gazing at the building admiringly. “It looks new. In fact the whole street has a kind of San Francisco-after-the-fire appearance.”
“That’s right, sir. It’s not so long since some of the worst slums in London were pulled down to make way for it.”
“It’s fine; but I’m rather stuck on antiquities. I’ve seen plenty of last year’s palaces on the other side. Have a drink, will you, when time’s up?”
The policeman glanced surreptitiously at the half-crown which Spencer insinuated into his palm, and looked after the donor as he went back to the hotel.
“Well, I’m jiggered!” he said to himself. “I’ve often heard tell of the way some Americans see London; but I never came across a chap who rushed up in his bare head and took a squint at any place in that fashion. He seemed to have his wits about him too; but there must be a screw loose somewhere.”
And indeed Charles K. Spencer, had he paused to take stock of his behavior, must have admitted that it was, to say the least, erratic. But his imagination was fired; his sympathies were all a-quiver with the thought that it lay within his power to share with a kin soul some small part of the good fortune that had fallen to his lot of late.
“Wants a fairy godmother, does she?” he asked himself, and the quiet humor that gleamed in his face caused more than one passerby to turn and watch him as he strode along the pavement. “Well, I guess I’ll play a character not hitherto heard of in the legitimate drama. What price the fairy godfather? I’ve a picture of myself in that rôle. Oh, my! See me twirl that wand! Helen, you shall climb those rocks. But I don’t like your friend. I sha’n’t send you to Champèry. No—Champèry’s off the map for you.”