Tom, exasperated to see those two pound-notes lying on the counter, flung down another two to match them.
“That’s for the smashed container and the cakes,” he said.
“But, reolly, now!” protested Dolly, in an ultra-refined voice. “This is too much money. And is the Commissioner of Police reolly your father?”
“ ’S right, miss,” said Police-Constable Dawson, and stolidly marched out.
“Ducks, ducks, ducks!” cried Stella, addressing Tom. Being not very pretty, she was more inclined to sympathize with his bedevilments. “You needn’t worry about your young lady. ’Course there’s another way out of ’ere!”
“There is?”
“ ’Course there is. At the back, and turn sideways. I saw your young lady run out as soon as we heard the old witch’s voice outside. Either the young lady’s still hiding in the passage past the washroom, or she’s gorn out into Paternoster Row.”
“My deepest thanks!” said Tom.
He turned and plunged towards the back — only to be stopped short by another figure materializing in this extraordinary tea shop.
This was a shortish, wiry man with his light-brown hair cropped close to the head after a prevailing American fashion. He was perhaps in his middle thirties; he wore loose-fitting clothes, and his tie could be seen at sixty paces in any crowd.
“Now hold it, brother!” he urged. “Don’t go busting out of there or you’ll louse up the whole deal.”
Tom blinked at him.
“The old lady,” continued the stranger, evidently referring to Aunt Hester, “left her car — it would be a limousine — parked in Paternoster Row. It’s not there now. She’ll be screaming for the cops again, and you’ll run smack into her. Besides, the kid is safe now.”
“The kid? You mean Jenny? Where is she?”
Something like a self-satisfied smile crept across the newcomer’s face.
“I told the chauffeur,” he said, “to drive her straight to a guy named Sir Henry Merrivale, at an address he seemed to know. Sit down for a minute, until the old dame stops yelling about her stolen car.”
Tom Lockwood extended his hand.
“Maybe you won’t want to shake hands,” retorted the newcomer almost evilly, and put his hands behind his back, “when you hear what I am.”
There was about him something distinctly foreign, in a way that no American is ever foreign. Though Tom could not analyze it, his companion enlightened him.
“Get it?” he asked. “I’m a Canadian. Lamoreux’s the name — Steve Lamoreux. I was born in Montreal; I can speak French as well as I speak English. In Paris they say my accent is terrible; but they understand me. I’m a newsman for L’Oeil, Been in France for six months. Don’t you get it now?”
“Well! I...”
Steve Lamoreux’s shrewd brown eyes, in the hard yet sympathetic face, were almost glaring at him. And Lamoreux spoke bitterly.
“I’m the stooge,” he said. “I’m the tail. In other words, I’m Armand de Senneville’s hired spy to keep out of the way, never let the girl see me, but make sure she doesn’t meet any boy friends. If she does...”
Tom, aware that both Stella and Dolly were listening with all their ears raised his voice.
“Could we have two more teas, please?” he called. Then, to Lamoreux: “Into the booth here. And keep your voice low.”
They sat down opposite each other.
“What the hell?” said Lamoreux. “I’m only human. That girl’s too innocent; I won’t see her pushed around. What’s more, I can’t take this miracle stuff any longer — not for a hundred bucks a week or anything else. Do you realize that, but for a thousand-to-one chance, she’d be lying dead at the mortuary this very minute?”
It was a cold and ugly statement, just as the great bell of St. Paul’s boomed out the hour of five.
“She didn’t tell you how bad it was last night, did she?” asked Lamoreux.
“Not the details, no.”
“No, you bet she didn’t! The girl has guts — I’ll say that for her.”
“But how do you know she didn’t tell me?”
“Because I overheard every word you two said in here! Look!” persisted Lamoreux, tapping a finger into his palm. “When they started out today, in their grand limousine, I followed in a taxi. Aunt Hester knows me, and knows all about me. Her husband, Uncle Fred, and young Margot — well, they’ve seen me once, here in England. I couldn’t help that, but they’d never seen me before, and it doesn’t matter. Jenny doesn’t, and mustn’t, even suspect.
“Those were my orders from young de Senneville. He didn’t dare send a Frenchman as a tail — it might be too conspicuous. But Jenny’s seen this map of mine more than once at the newspaper office; if she spotted me, it might shake her faith in good old Armand.”
“Quiet!” Tom warned softly.
It was Dolly who appeared, demurely, setting down two mugs of tea already sugared. Though she seemed inclined to linger, Lamoreux’s glance sent her away miffed.
“Armand de Senneville,” Tom said between his teeth. “What I should like to do to that...!”
“Easy, now, brother! You’re talking about my boss.”
“He may not be your boss much longer. You may get a better one.”
“How’s that? Say it again.”
“Never mind; get on with the story.”
“Well! Aunt Hester and Margot and Jenny had the car parked in Paternoster Row. They told the chauffeur to wait there. I ditched my taxi, and sat in the car with the chauffeur. We could see the whole front of St. Paul’s. We knew we could see ’em come out.”
“And then?”
“You know what happened. About thirty-five minutes later, she comes tearing down the steps. You grab her. I think to myself, ‘Steve, this is your job; this is where the balloon goes up.’ Over you come to this place. I sneak in the back way, and I’m practically against a matchboard partition behind you. When I heard about a voice speaking in the whispering gallery, when no voice could have spoken, I damn near fainted. And there’s another thing.”
“Yes?”
Uneasily Lamoreux drew out a packet of Yellow French cigarettes. He struck an old-fashioned sulphur match; he brooded while holding the match until the sulphur burned away. Then, still lost in thought, he lit the cigarette and flicked away the match.
“When I first got a gander at you, see—” Lamoreux stopped.
“Well? What is it?”
“I thought it was an ordinary pick-up. Then, when I heard you two talking, I thought you were a right guy. And I still think so.”
They glared at each other, because no man pays a compliment to another’s face. Then, after an embarrassed pause:
“That’s why I stuck my neck out. I could see Aunt Hester charging for this joint before either of you two did. I knew Jenny would duck for a way out. And she knew the car was parked just beside here. So I rushed out and told Pearson — that’s the chauffeur — to drive her straight to this guy H.M. I’d heard of the old — the old gentleman; and I knew he was all right.”
Lamoreux pointed his cigarette at Tom with grimacing emphasis.
“But get this!” he added. “I’m no guardian angel or preux chevalier. The hell with that stuff. Somebody in dead earnest tried to bump off that kid. Somebody’ll try again, and I want no part of it. All I’d like to know, for the sweet suffering Moses’s sake, is who’s doing this and why?”
Lamoreux’s voice rose up piercingly until he remembered they were in public.
Then it sank to a whisper. They sat and thought and worried.
“Armand de Senneville—” Tom began.
“Look,” the other said wearily. “You’ve got that guy on the brain. De Senneville wants to marry her for her money. What good is it to him if she’s knocked off here in England?”