His indecision once conquered, he took the plunge instantly; caught up the desk telephone, called for a number, and two minutes later was talking to Cleek, thus:
“I say, old chap, don’t snap my head off for suggesting such a thing at such a time, but I’ve a most extraordinary case on hand and I hope to heaven that you will help me out with it. What’s that? Oh, come, now, that’s ripping of you, old chap, and I’m as pleased as Punch. What? Oh, get along with you! No more than you’d do for me under the same circumstances, I’ll be sworn. Yes, to-day—as early as possible. Right you are. Then could you manage to meet me in the bar parlour of a little inn called the French Horn, out Shere way, in Surrey, about four o’clock? Could, eh? Good man! Oh, by the way, come prepared to meet a lady of title, old chap—she’s the client. Thanks very much. Good-bye.”
Then he hung up the receiver, rang for Lennard, and set about preparing for the journey forthwith.
And this, if you please, was how it came to pass that when Mr. Maverick Narkom turned up at the French Horn that afternoon he found a saddle horse tethered to a post outside, and Cleek, looking very much like one of the regular habitués of Rotten Row who had taken it into his mind to canter out into the country for a change, standing in the bar parlour window and looking out with appreciative eyes upon the broad stretch of green downs that billowed away to meet the distant hills.
“My dear chap, how on earth do you manage it?” said the superintendent, eying him with open approval, not to say admiration. “I don’t mean the mere putting on the clothes and looking the part—I’ve seen dozens in my time who could do that right enough, but the beggars always ‘fell down’ when it came to the acting and the talking, while you—I don’t know what the dickens it is nor how you manage to get it, but there’s a certain something or other in your bearing, your manner, your look, when you tackle this sort of thing that I always believed a man had to be born to and couldn’t possibly acquire in any other way.”
“There you are wrong, my dear friend. It is possible, as you see. That is what makes the difference between the mere actor and the real artiste,” replied Cleek, with an air of conceited self-appreciation which was either a clever illusion or an exhibition of great weakness. “If one man might not do these things better than another man, we should have no Irvings to illuminate the stage, and acting would drop at once from its place among the arts to the undignified level of a tawdry trade. And now, as our American cousins say, ‘Let’s come down to brass tacks.’ What’s the case and who’s the lady?”
“The widow of the late Sir George Essington, and grandmother of the young gentleman in whose interest you are to be consulted.”
“Grandmother, eh? Then the lady is no longer young?”
“Not as years go, although, to look at her, you would hardly suspect that she is a day over five-and-thirty. The Gentleman with the Hour Glass has dealt very, very lightly with her. Where he has failed to be considerate, however, the ladies, who conduct certain ‘parlours’ in Bond Street, have come to the rescue in fine style.”
“Oh, she is that kind of woman, is she?” said Cleek with a pitch of the shoulders. “I have no patience with the breed! As if there was anything more charming than a dear, wrinkly old grandmother who bears her years gracefully and fusses over her children’s children like an old hen with a brood of downy chicks. But a grandmother who goes in for wrinkle eradicators, cream of lilies, skin-tighteners, milk of roses, and things of that kind—faugh! It has been my experience, Mr. Narkom, that when a woman has any real cause for worrying over the condition of her face, she usually has a just one to be anxious over that of her soul. So this old lady is one of the ‘face painters,’ is she?”