Page:The Black Camel (IA blackcamel0000earl).djvu/120

“I picked this up on Kalakaua Avenue,” the policeman explained. “I thought you might like to see him. He’s a little mixed on what he’s been doing to-night.”

The man to whom he referred shook off the officer’s grip and stepped toward Charlie. “I trust we’re not too late for dinner,” he remarked. He stood for a moment looking about the hall and then, as though prompted by old memories, removed from his head a limp and tattered hat of straw. “My chauffeur is really rather stupid. He lost his way.”

His manner was jaunty and debonair, no mean triumph considering his costume. Aside from the hat, which he now clutched in a thin freckled hand, that costume consisted of a badly soiled pair of white duck trousers, a blue shirt open at the throat, a disreputable velvet coat that had once been the color of Burgundy and the remnants of a pair of shoes, through the holes of which peered the white of his naked feet.

The buzz of conversation from the dining-room had died, the group in there appeared to be listening, and Charlie hastily held open the curtains to the living-room. “Come in here, please,” he said, and they entered to find Fyfe waiting there alone. For a moment the man in the velvet coat stared at the actor, and under the yellow ragged beard that had not known barber’s scissors for a month, a slow smile appeared.

“Now,” Chan said. “Who are you? Where do you live?”

The man shrugged. “The name,” he replied, “might be Smith.”

“It might also be Jones,” Charlie suggested.

“A mere matter of taste. Personally, I prefer Smith.”