“Am I to understand that you are trying to frighten me with this ridiculous persecution? And what, Mr. Raphael, is to prevent me from giving you in charge to that policeman? You are, I think, wanted for murder.”
Julian Raphael’s black eyes seemed to shine with mockery. “There’s nothing in the world to prevent you, Sir Charles, except that any policeman would think you mad for asking him to arrest air. Not, as you suggest, that he wouldn’t, in the ordinary way, be pleased to catch the Prince of the Jews. May I offer you a light for that cigar?”
And as Sir Charles lit his cigar from the match held out to him he was not surprised to find himself looking into the ancient eyes of Hunt, the commissionaire outside his club in Hamilton Place. His walk up Piccadilly, his talk with the young Jew, had taken no longer than it takes to light a cigar. This was the third time within a fortnight that the Admiral had been privileged to see his old enemy, to walk with him and talk with him; and his awakening had each time been to find that not more than a couple of seconds had passed and that he had never moved from his station.
Sir Charles abruptly reentered the club and, in the smoking-room, addressed himself to his old friend Hilary Townshend.
“Hilary,” said he, “I have a tale to tell you. It is very fanciful, and you will dislike it. I dislike it for the same reason. But I want you, my oldest friend, to know certain facts in case anything happens to me in the course of the next few days—or nights. In my life, as you know, I have not had many dealings with the grotesque. But the grotesque seems lately to be desiring the very closest connection with me. It began two years ago when I officiously tried to be of some service to a young Jewess called Manana Cohen. God help me, I thought I was acting for the best.”
There follows the tale told by Admiral Sir Charles Fasset-Faith to Mr. Townshend.
The Admiral’s Tale
About two years ago [said Sir Charles], during one of my leaves in London, young Mrs. Harpenden persuaded me to go down with her to a club of some sort she was helping to run down in the East End.
There were then, and for all I know there are now, a number of pretty and sound young women doing their best to placate God for the sins of their Victorian fathers by making life in the East End as tolerable as possible. Of course, only once a week. Venice’s idea in landing me was that I should give the young devils down there a rough lecture on the Navy in general and the Jutland fight in particular—that kind of thing.
So there I stood yapping away, surrounded by a crowd of amiable and attentive young men and women. In a room nearby poor Napier Harpenden was trying to get away with only one black eye from a hefty young navvy to whom he was supposed to be teaching boxing. Across a counter in a far corner Venice was handing out cups of perfectly revolting coffee. She had all the bloods at her call that night, had Venice. In one corner Tarlyon was teaching a crowd Jujitsu, and in another Hugo Cypress was playing draughts with a Boy Scout—it did one good to see him. And there, in the middle of all that, was the old mug roaring away about the silent Navy.