"This is too much like Government House," he complained of an Ascot Week ball at Bodmin Lodge with Royalty present. "I want a holiday from knee-breeches and twenty-one gun salutes. Low Life, George! Have you no Low Life to show me?"
I referred the question to Summertown, who was wandering about with a cigarette drooping from his lips and an anxious eye on the time.
"Wait just ten minutes," he begged us. "Greville and Fatty Webster have gone off to cut the electric-light wires."
"But why?" I asked.
"To cheer these lads up a bit," he answered, pointing a disgusted finger at the stiff, formal ballroom.
"Then I propose to leave at once," I said, making for the staircase.
"Oh, you'd better stay," he called after me. "Why, for all you know, you may get your pocket picked by a third-class royalty. Not everyone can say that, you know, and some of to-night's lot look proper Welshers. Just as you like, though, and, if you'd really rather go, I'll give you a scrambled egg at the 'Coq d'Or.'"
My cousin brightened visibly at the suggestion, and the three of us drove to a silent, ill-lit street off Soho Square. An impressive commissionaire admitted us to a small oak-panelled hall with a cloakroom on one side and a new mahogany counter on the other. A Visitors' Book lay open, and Summertown gravely inscribed in it the names of J. Boswell, Auchinleck; S. Johnson, Litchfield; and R. B. Sheridan, London. We descended to a glaring white and gold room, as new as everything else, with tables round the wall, a negro orchestra at one end and in the middle an open space for dancing. Replace the negroes with Hungarians, and the room was an exact replica of any cabaret in Budapest or Vienna.
As cicerone, Summertown enjoyed himself. By dint of addressing the waiters as 'Gerald,' the ladies as 'Billy' and demanding 'my usual table,' he secured us kidney omelettes, sweet champagne and the company of two lightly clad and strangely scented young women, whose serious occupation in life was twice daily to shuffle on to the Round House stage by way of a platform through the stalls, to the refrain of "Have you seen my rag-time ra-ags?" A swarthy Creole hovered within call and was urged to complete the party.
"Je suis femme mariée, m'sieur," she sighed, shaking her head.