"You don't happen to know any one of the name of Vivien about here, I suppose?"
He looked up at once. "Vivien!" he repeated; "well, there's a Mamzelle
Vivien across the road. D'you mean her?"
I shrugged my shoulders. "I don't know," I said; then, with a coolness which would have done credit to Ananias, I added: "A friend of mine has picked up a little bag or something with 'Vivien, Bond Street,' on it. He asked me to see if I could find the owner."
The landlord nodded his head with interest. "That'll be her, I expect.
Mamzelle Vivien the palmist—just across the way."
"Oh, she's a palmist, is she?" I exclaimed. The thought of George consulting a palmist was decidedly entertaining. Perhaps he wanted to find out whether I was likely to wring his neck.
With a side glance at the chauffeurs, the landlord leaned a little towards me and slightly lowered his voice. "Well, that's what she calls 'erself," he observed. "Palmist and Clairvoyante; and a smart bit o' goods she is too."
"But I thought the police had stopped that sort of thing," I said.
The landlord shook his head. "The police don't interfere with her. She don't advertise or anything like that, and I reckon she has some pretty useful friends. You'd be surprised if I was to tell you some o' the people I seen going in there—Cabinet Ministers and Bishops."
"It sounds like the Athenaeum Club," I said. "Do you know what she charges?"
"No," he replied; "something pretty stiff I guess. With folks like that it's a case of make 'ay while the sun shines."