He laughed. The girl bolted under my arm and joined him. He just laughed. I said: “Good-night, Manana. Don’t let him hurt you.” She didn’t seem to dare look at me.
They went, up that muddy lane. He had her by the arm, and you could see he had her tight. There aren’t many lamps in that beau quartier, and a few steps took them out of my sight. I heard a scream, and then a sob.
That settled Julian Raphael so far as I was concerned. Then another sob—from the back of that nasty darkness. I couldn’t, of course, go after them then. It would look too much as though I was bidding for possession of the young Jew’s love-lady. But at that moment I made up my mind I’d land that pretty boy sometime soon. That scream had made me feel just a trifle sick. That was personal. Then I was against Julian Raphael impersonally because I’ve always been for law and order. You have too, Hilary. I shouldn’t wonder if that’s not another reason why women find men like us dull. But some of us must be, God knows, in this world. And it was against all law and order that young Mr. Julian Raphael—imagine any man actually using a name like that!—should be loose in the world. Crook was too simple a word for Mr. Raphael. And he was worse for being so devilish handsome. One imagined him with women—with this poor soul of a Manana. Of course, Venice and Napier and the other people at their potty old club knew nothing about either of them. They must have just drifted in, they said. They had, into my life.
The very next morning I rang up our friend H—— at Scotland Yard and asked him if he knew anything about a Julian Raphael. Oh, didn’t he! Had a dossier of him as long as my arm. H—— said: “The Prince of the Jews, that’s Julian Raphael’s pet name. Profession: counterfeiter. But we’ve never yet caught him or his gang.”
Oh, the cinema wasn’t in it with our fancy young friend. The police had been after him for about five years. Once they had almost got him for knifing a Lascar. Murder right enough, but they’d had to release him for lack of evidence. The Lascar, H—— said, had probably threatened to give away a cocaine plant, and Julian Raphael had slit his throat. Suspected of cocaine-smuggling, living on immoral earnings of women, and known to be the finest existing counterfeiter of Bank of England £5 notes. Charming man, Mr. Julian Raphael.
“I want to land him,” I told H——.
“Thanks very much,” said he. “So do we.”
“Well, how about that girl of his—Manana something?”
“Manana Cohen? Catch her giving him away! She adores the beast, and so do they all, those who aren’t terrified of him.”
I said: “Well, we’ll see. I want to get that boy. I don’t like him.”