Again: why? The Germans could send any mug to search a room. Any mug with his own mug that he could show in public.
I had no answer for now, but I knew I was not as lucky as that hypothetical mug; I could not show my actual self.
I brushed the spirit gum onto my face and applied the gauze. I changed into my second suit of clothes, a blue serge. I put my left arm into a sling and hobbled out on my cane into the street. I stepped into a taxi — using an upper-class British accent — and I made for the address Metcalf gave me for Brauer. He had a bachelor flat at number 70 Jermyn Street, between St. James Square and Green Park. I had the taxi driver drop me half a block east of Brauer’s building, an odd-looking, seven-floor corner affair with both a gable and a turret sitting pretty much side by side.
I got out of the taxi as quickly as I could in keeping with my new disability and I paid the driver. As I was about to walk away, he called me back to him, “Gov’nor,” he said, and I turned. He pulled off his cap and nodded at my arm. “Thank you for your service,” he said.
“We’ll kick their bloody asses,” I said, maintaining my upper-crusty accent. This made his head snap in surprise, and then he lifted his face and laughed.
Which was a good exit line for a good performance and I hobbled off on my cane before he could say any more. Only then did I realize that by cursing with him like a pal — sincerely so, Chicago-style — I’d given him a better feeling about the swells of this country than the swells deserved.
I moved along west, and the taxi went past me with the driver giving me a respectful nod, which I ignored in order to start bringing him back to the class reality of his bloody country.
I crossed Jermyn Street to the north side at Brauer’s corner, with Bury Street dead ending there. A couple of doors farther west was a pub, Hotspur, opposite the entrance to these bachelor flats, which had an engraved sign on the linteclass="underline" marlborough chambers.
I entered the bar and sat at a table at the front window. It was still early and slow in the place. I figured I might be here a long time. The delivery wasn’t till eight tonight, about a half hour after sunset. But I didn’t know where Selene was and probably didn’t know where the meeting would be, now that I’d compromised the shop. So Brauer was my only link, and I was a little nervous that he might’ve gone out this morning and would stay out. I had to keep his door under surveillance for as much of the day as I could.
I nursed Black and Tans for hours, keeping to myself, ignoring the day drunks, and then the light was waning and then it was getting on toward half past seven o’clock and the darkness was washing over the building facades and I was seriously worried Brauer wasn’t in his bachelor flat at all but off somewhere and I’d completely lose the thread.
And then finally there he was, stepping out of the Marlborough Chambers and looking up and down the street. I guessed for a taxicab. I was glad he didn’t find one. If he’d caught an isolated taxi passing by, I’d have been hard pressed to get one to follow him. But he turned west and walked off.
I put some cash down and got up quick, belying the bum leg, if any of the guys at the bar were watching. But I was out the door and done with the pub and dotting the pavement with my cane in a quick trot as long as Brauer wasn’t looking my way.
Staying always on the opposite side of the street, I followed him along Jermyn and then north on St. James. He never once paused or looked back, never considering he might be followed. The next corner was Piccadilly, and as soon as he reached it, he stopped and looked to his left. For a taxi, I again presumed.
I crossed St. James, trusting my disguise now, and I passed him by, my face averted, dragging my right leg. A newer model Unic, with its headlamps flanking its radiator, was a hundred yards ahead, coming this way slow enough to be scouting a fare. I stepped to the curb and into the street, giving a quick glance in Brauer’s direction. He was partway into the street himself, his hand raised, focused on the same taxi.
I turned my back in his direction, lifted my hand discreetly but clearly for the taxi, and it stopped. I stepped into the glass-partitioned tonneau, and I took up the speaking tube and told the cabbie simply to drive on. When we were clear of Brauer, I looked out the rear window. His back was to me, his attention up the street. I told the driver to pull over and wait. Brauer soon caught a massive Panhard Levassor, which would be easy to spot in traffic. He passed us and we followed.
Brauer took us to the Savoy.
It was arguably the best hotel in London. Certainly it was the most elegantly out of place in this ubiquitously begrimed city, thick with coal smoke and acrid fog. The Savoy was faced with pale pink terra-cotta and it had a bright green tiled roof. The river side was open and unfettered; Monet had painted the Battersea Bridge and the Houses of Parliament from an upper room. But the Strand approach was down a short street they’d created a decade ago between existing buildings, and the hotel entrance was dim beneath a covered court, lit in the gathering dark of twilight with gas lamps.
Brauer kept his Panhard waiting while he hustled inside. I kept my Unic, engaging the driver, a quiet old man with a crumpled face and an upcountry accent. I had him for the next few hours if need be, and I started his employ by having him turn us around in the short approach street to face the Strand, and we backed up far enough for me to watch the main hotel doors from the taxi rear window.
I mostly kept my mind in suspension for the task at hand. But waiting for Selene to make her entrance was difficult for me, since I expected never to touch her again. I even thought for a few moments about spirit gum. It was a classic smell of the theater. And just that tenuous association with acting gave me a brief, ridiculous thought that it had been Selene in my room. Of course it had not.
Then she appeared. Selene was a dark slash against the glow of gas, wearing a form-fitting ankle-length black coat and a black turban hat with a veil. Brauer was a lapdog trailing pantingly along as she glided from the hotel door and into the taxi. Brauer scrambled in behind, and the Panhard rolled away, disappearing briefly from view and then emerging from the covered court and gliding past us and into the Strand.
We followed.
I suddenly realized where they were heading when we turned from Bedford into the short and narrow New Street. A few moments later the Panhard made the left into St. Martin’s Lane. I knew number 53 was just around that corner. The Germans hadn’t changed their plans. Brauer was taking Selene to the bookstore.
I took up the speaking tube and told my driver to turn in the opposite direction onto St. Martin’s and stop at once by the curb, on the right-hand side.
The night was dense now with the overcast dark. The streetlights were electric and we were parked not much more than fifty yards from number 53. We sat just past and across the street from another West End theater. The New Theatre. Its facade lights were bright but I was masked in the deep shadow of the tonneau, and I watched through the back window as Selene and Brauer stepped from their taxi and crossed quickly into Metzger & Strauss, Booksellers. The Panhard pulled away and went off down St. Martin’s toward Trafalgar Square.
I withdrew my watch, and it said 7:56. As I held the gold-filled Elgin, all the newly acquired objects of my life suddenly lapped at me like the North Atlantic at my ankles. I became keenly conscious that the two people who’d just flashed before me in the dark shared that whole event, and so, as I pressed my post-sinking timepiece back into the watch pocket of my post-sinking pants, an odd little complicated tremor passed through me.
Another taxicab turned out of New Street and rolled to a stop at number 53. I shook off this upswell of trapped air from the vanished Lusitania. I waited for the taxi passenger to emerge. Another principal player perhaps, not associated with the shop. The streetlight was six or eight yards farther along St. Martin’s; Selene and Brauer had appeared mostly as silhouettes. I watched closely as the taxi door opened.