The Ginger King

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Excerpt

Monsieur Hanaud was smoking one of Mr. Ricardo’s special Havanas in the dining-room of Mr. Ricardo’s fine house in Grosvenor Square. The trial which had fetched him over from Paris had ended that morning. He had eaten a very good lunch with his friend; he had taken the napkin down from his collar; he was at his ease; and as he smoked, alas! He preached.

“Chance, my friend, is the detective’s best confederate. A little unimportant word you use and it startles…a strange twist of character is provoked to reveal itself–an odd incident breaks in on the routine of your investigation. And the mind pounces. ‘Ping,’ you say, if you play the table-tennis. ‘Pong,’ you say, if you play the Mahjong. And there you are! In at the brush.”

“I beg your pardon.”

For the moment Mr. Ricardo was baffled.

“I said, ‘You are in at the brush,’” Hanaud repeated amicably.

Mr. Ricardo smiled with indulgence. He too had eaten his share of an admirable saddle of lamb and drunk his half of a bottle of exquisite Haut Brion.

“You mean, of course, that you are in at the death,” he said.

“No, no,” Hanaud protested, starting forward. “I do not speak of executions. Detectives are never present at executions and, for me, I find them disgusting. I say, you are in at the brush. It is an idiom from your hunting-field. It means that when all the mess is swept up, you are there, the Man who found the Lady under the thimble.”

Mr. Ricardo was in no mood to pursue his large friend through the winding mazes of his metaphors.

“I am beginning to understand you,” he answered with resignation.

“Yes.” Hanaud nodded his head complacently. “I speak the precision. It is known.”

With a gentle knock, Mr. Ricardo’s incomparable butler Thomson entered the room.

“A Mr. Middleton has called,” he said, offering to Ricardo a visiting-card upon a salver.

Ricardo waved the salver away.

“I do not see visitors immediately after luncheon. It is an unforgivable time to call. Send him away!”

The butler, however, persisted.

“I took the liberty of pointing out that the hour was unseasonable,” he said, “but Mr. Middleton was in hopes that Monsieur Hanaud was staying with you. He seemed very anxious.”

Ricardo took up the card reluctantly. He read aloud.

“Mr. John Middleton, Secretary of the Unicorn Fire Insurance Company. I am myself insured with that firm.” He turned towards his guest. “No doubt he has some reason to excuse him. But it is as you wish.”

Monsieur Hanaud’s strange ambition that afternoon was to climb the Monument and to see the Crown Jewels at the Tower, but his good nature won the day, and since he was to find more than one illustration of the text upon which he had been preaching, he never regretted it.

“I am on view, he said simply.

“We will see Mr. Middleton in the Library,” said Mr. Ricardo; and into that spacious dormitory of deep armchairs and noble books Mr. Middleton was introduced.

Hanaud was delighted with the look of him. Mr. Middleton was a collector’s piece of Victorian England. Middle-aged, with dangling whiskers like lappets at the sides of an otherwise clean-shaved face, very careful and a trifle old-maidish in his speech, he had a tittering laugh and wore the long black frock-coat and the striped trousers which once made the City what is was. He was wreathed in apologies for his intrusion.

“My good friend Superintendent Holloway, of Marlborough Street, whose little property is insured with us, thought that I might find you at Mr. Ricardo’s house. I am very fortunate.”

“I must return to Paris tomorrow,” Hanaud replied. For this afternoon I am at your service. You will smoke?”

From his pocket Hanaud tendered a bright blue packet of black stringy cigarettes, and Mr. Middleton recoiled as if he suddenly saw a cobra on the carpet ready to strike.

“Oh no, no!” he cried in dismay. “A small mild cigar when the day’s work is done. You will forgive me? I have a little story to tell.”

“Proceed!” said Hanaud graciously.

“It is a Mr. Enoch Swallow,” Mr. Middleton began. “I beg you not to be misled by his name. He is a Syrian gentleman by birth and an English gentleman by naturalization. But again I beg you not to be misled. There is nothing of the cunning of the Orient about him. He is a big, plain, simple creature, a peasant, one might say as honest as the day. And it may be so. I make no accusation.”

“He has a business, this honest man?” Hanaud asked.

“He is a furrier.”

“You begin to interest me,” said Hanaud.