Page:The Yellow Book - 08.djvu/145

before the fire paring his nails. Oiled hair, curled moustache, liquid eyes, short putty figure, a velvet collar to his dinner coat; he was the same hopeless, middle-aged dandy—unchanged, unregenerate. I knew my man, and so came to the point at once. "Kettle," I said, "I want to have some conversation with the Raja of Pepperthala, and I should also be much obliged if you would let me have a peep at a certain valuable known to fame as 'the Enchanted Gem.'"

He looked up quickly, smiled in an embarrassed kind of way, and flicked a crumb from his sleeve.

"Such an interview, my dear fellow, is quite ultra vires. I have already refused some of the very smartest people in London. As to what you call the Enchanted Gem I don't know what you mean. It's caviare to me, quite caviare," he repeated, fumbling nervously with a gold toothpick.

I caught him by the arm (he reeked of patchouli) and whispered something in his ear. I was not in a mood to bandy words with the fellow, who rolled his foolish little foreign expressions round his tongue like a bear with a piece of honeycomb. He shrunk away from me, spreading his hands between us. "All right," he stuttered, breaking back to the accent of other days. "Play fair!"

Observing the amusement I made no effort to conceal, he quickly recovered himself.

"What you require is difficile," he said sententiously. "The old fellow is mad with rum and disease. Really I daren't present him to a stranger. Stop! I have an idea bien trouvé! He is in the next room alone. I'll turn down the gas. You sit here on a line with the door. I open it, inventing an excuse to speak to him. That is your opportunity, n'cest ce pas! But don't utter a sound. And if he catches sight of you make yourselfscarce!