Derek smiled. 'The meal, if we can get one, is on me. I drew fifty quid out of the bank last week in case of emergencies.'
At Baker Street they came into the crowds again so Derek turned right, into Gloucester Place, then back through Port-man Square into Orchard Street. They were hung up for a quarter of an hour at the Oxford Street crossing and in the
distance could see masses of people jamming the roadway right up to Marble Arch. But the crowd was good-tempered and eventually they managed to get through; reaching Park Lane at last, and their destination, by way of Deanery Street.
To their surprise, they found the Dorchester packed to the doors. The lounge was as crowded as a railway terminus before a Bank Holiday week-end, and waiters were having difficulty in securing a passage through the crush to bring drinks to those people who had been fortunate enough to obtain tables.
Every table in the Grill Room was also taken but the head waiter, who was standing in the doorway, recognised Lavina.
'You seem to be doing marvellous business,' she smiled at him.
He gave her a worried look. 'It is not good, madame. Many of our waiters have failed to report for duty and many of the kitchen staff are also gone; yet we have to cope with all these people. And we do not like this crowd. Very few of them are our usual patrons and they make unpleasantness for the guests who are still staying in the hotel.'
'We were hoping to get some supper here,' she said, "but it looks as though that's impossible.'
'In the Grill, yes, madame,' he spread out his hands, 'but I may be able to get you a table in the Restaurant.'
'But we're not changed.'
He shrugged. 'Temporarily, that rule is no more. People made us withdraw it when they overflowed from the Grill, and old customers like yourself we could not refuse.'
Turning, he forced a way for them through the press and as there was not a single table vacant in the Restaurant he had one set up on the already diminished dance-floor.
They were lucky in getting a bottle of champagne almost at once, but it was a good half hour before the caviare rolled in smoked salmon, which they had ordered as a first course, appeared; and during their wait they had plenty of time to study the people about them.
It was quite clear that very few of them frequented the Dorchester in normal times. Only a handful were in evening dress. Many of the women were exotic-looking ladies, obviously from the streets round Piccadilly, and the bulk of the men were flashily-dressed foreigners of the type that usually haunt the Soho bars.
At nearly every table people were drinking champagne but, although appearances are often deceptive, something about the types which formed many of the groups made Derek wonder vaguely if they meant to pay for it or would try and slip away before their bills were brought to them. He wished now that he had insisted on taking Lavina straight back to St. James's Square, but she was in excellent form and Roy, his rather weak but attractive face wreathed in smiles, was entertaining her with a series of limericks in Pidgin-English which he had brought back from China.
The band, reduced to half its usual number, was doing its best but it was almost drowned in the babel of voices. The dance-floor was crowded with a solid mass of perspiring humanity. One look round the great room was enough to see that the people in it were the very antithesis of those who were praying in the churches. They typified the wilder elements of the Metropolis whom the possibility of being struck down in three days' time had released from all normal restraint. Their set faces and harsh laughter suggested a fierce determination to get everything possible out of life while it was still in them.
Perhaps as a result of their recent experience on Hampstead Heath Lavina and her two escorts found themselves unusually thirsty. Between the three of them their bottle of champagne was finished before their hors-d'oeuvres arrived, and Derek ordered another.
Twenty minutes went by but it did not appear, and Roy was grumbling about the delay when a big man with a bald head and bushy eyebrows, who was wearing a horse-shoe tie-pin in a striped cravat, leant across from the next table proffering a magnum.
'Here, have some of ours, old boy, till yours turns up,' he leered. 'It's all on the house tonight so what's the odds?'
Roy held out his glass at once and Derek, although he would have liked to refuse, followed suit because the big man looked as if he might resent a refusal and it would have been the height of folly to start a row at such a time on a point of ethics.
'And some for the little lady,' said their new acquaintance.
When Lavina's glass was full the big man picked up his own.
'Well, here's to you all! Happy days and three nights of bliss before the old comet hits us!' He gave a special smirk in Lavina's direction.
As they were about to drink, a Spanish-looking woman at his table irritably claimed his attention so for the moment they were relieved of his advances.
In spite of the crush Lavina wanted to dance, so Derek took her on to the floor; but when they returned to their table neither their second course nor the second bottle of wine had appeared and it seemed, on looking round the room, that the waiters had given up the unequal struggle.
'It's nearly half-past eleven,' Derek remarked, 'and it doesn't look as though we're going to get our omelette. I think we'd better go home.'
'Don't be silly,' Lavina shrugged. She was staring out under lowered lids, over the cigarette she was constantly puffing, at the jammed mass of dancers. 'I'm enjoying myself watching all these queer people.'
'Maybe, but things are going to get pretty tough here soon, unless I'm much mistaken.'
'Well, I'm not going,' she said, with sudden firmness. 'It's just like a gala night, only the most extraordinary one I've ever seen.'
At that moment a man in a check suit pushed his way past their table. He was carrying four bottles of champagne in his hands and others were wedged under his arm-pits.
'By jove!' exclaimed Roy. 'That chap's been raiding the cellars. I'm in on this. Hang on here, and I'll get a few bottles.'
'You can't do that,' Derek protested.
'Why not?' Roy got to his feet. 'If the waiters won't serve us, why shouldn't we help ourselves?' He left them abruptly.
That he was right in his surmise that looting had started was soon clear as other men in lounge suits, quite obviously not employed by the hotel, came thrusting their way through the crowded entrance of the Restaurant clutching bottles of champagne, brandy and whisky.
The new supplies of drink were soon in circulation and gave an added fillip to the already irresponsible assembly. Someone else had thought of raiding the hotel's supply of carnival favours. Coloured streamers, balloons and puff-balls began to be thrown from table to table; paper hats appeared on the heads of the dancers; tin whistles and klaxon horns were thrown from hand to hand and added their noise to the already incredible din.
Roy returned flushed and laughing, with a couple of magnums of Louis Roederer. He gave one to the big man with the horse-shoe tie-pin at the next table and opened up the other for his own party.
'You should just see the crowd in the cellar,' he grinned. 'This little beano's going to cost the hotel a packet. Some of the chaps down there are too tight to move already and others are sitting on the floor lapping it up out of the bottles.'
Derek stood up. 'Come on, Lavina, I've had enough of this. I'm going to take you home.'
'Don't be an idiot, darling!' She smiled serenely. 'I've already told you I'm thoroughly enjoying myself.'
A few tables away a man had a girl pulled back across his chest and was kissing her neck. At another, two men were attempting to fight, while a flaxen-haired young woman screamed drunken curses at them as she endeavoured to pull them apart.