"Allow the canvas to remain in my hands—I will take the best of care of it," replied Mr. Lamb. "I will write to you as soon as Mr. Vernon returns, and will arrange that you shall meet him here."
"Very well, sir," assented Sir Lucius. "Let the matter rest at that. When I hear from you I will run up to town."
He still hoped to learn that he had bought the original picture, and he would have preferred an immediate solution of the question. He was in a dejected mood when he left the shop with his nephew, but he cheered up under the influence of a good lunch and a pint of port, and he was in fairly good spirits when he took an afternoon train from Victoria to his stately Sussex home.
"Hang the Rembrandt!" he said at parting. "I don't care how it turns out. Run down for a few days at the end of the month, Victor—I can give you some good shooting."
Glancing over a paper that evening, Mr. Lamb read of Jack Vernon's return. But to find him proved to be a different matter, and at the end of a week he was still unsuccessful. Then, meeting Victor Nevill on Regent street, he induced him to join in the search for the missing artist. The commission by no means pleased Nevill, but he did not see his way to refuse.
For thirteen days Sir Lucius Chesney had been back at Priory Court, happy among his horses and dogs, his short-horns and orchids; his pictures rested temporarily under a cloud, and he was rarely to be found in the spacious gallery. In London, Victor Nevill enjoyed life with as much zest as his conscience would permit; Madge Foster dragged through weary days and duller evenings at Strand-on-the-Green; and the editor of the Illustrated Universe wondered what had become of his bright young war-artist since the one brief visit to the office.
At two o'clock on a drizzling, foggy morning a policeman, walking up the Charing Cross Road, paused for a moment to listen to some remote strains of music that came indistinctly from a distance; then he shrugged his shoulders and went on—it was no business of his. The sounds that attracted the policeman's attention had their source in a cross street to the left—in one of those evil institutions known as a "night club," which it seems impossible to eradicate from the fast life of West End London.
It was a typical scene; there were many like it that night. The house had two street doors, and behind the inner one, which was fitted with a small grating and kept locked, squatted a vigilant keeper, equally ready to open to a member or deny admittance to any one who had no business there. On the first floor, up the dingy stairs, were two apartments. The outer and smaller room had a bar at one side, presided over by a bright, golden-haired young lady in very conspicuous evening dress, whose powers of repartee afforded much amusement to her customers. These were, many of them, in more or less advanced stages of intoxication, and they comprised sporting men, persons from various unfashionable walks of life, clerks who wanted to soar like eagles, and a few swell young men who had dropped in to be amused. A sprinkling of women must be added.
Both apartments were hung with engravings and French prints and decorated with tawdry curtains, and in the larger of the two dancing was going on. Here the crowd was denser and of the same heterogeneous kind. It was a festival of high jinks—a sway of riotous, unbridled merriment. A performer at the piano, with a bottle of beer within easy reach, rapped out the inspiriting chords of a popular melody. Couples glided over the polished floor, some lightly, some galloping, and all reckless of colliding with the onlookers. There was a touch of the risque in the dancing, suggesting the Moulin Rouge of a Casino de Paris carnival. Occasionally, during a lull, songs were sung by music-hall artistes of past celebrity, who were now glad of the chance to earn a few shillings before an uncritical audience. The atmosphere was charged with the scent of rouge and powder, brandy and stale sherry. Coarse jest and laughter, ringing on the night, mocked at go-to-bed London.