Only the two nearest to the door, as I went in, were occupied. On one
side sat a tall, flashy, rather Mephistophelian man whom I had seen from
time to time in the domino room and elsewhere. On the other side sat
Soames. They made a queer contrast in that sunlit room--Soames sitting
haggard in that hat and cape which nowhere at any season had I seen him
doff, and this other, this keenly vital man, at sight of whom I more
than ever wondered whether he were a diamond merchant, a conjurer, or
the head of a private detective agency. I was sure Soames didn't want my
company; but I asked, as it would have seemed brutal not to, whether
I might join him, and took the chair opposite to his. He was smoking
a cigarette, with an untasted salmi of something on his plate and a
half-empty bottle of Sauterne before him; and he was quite silent. I
said that the preparations for the Jubilee made London impossible. (I
rather liked them, really.) I professed a wish to go right away till
the whole thing was over. In vain did I attune myself to his gloom. He
seemed not to hear me nor even to see me. I felt that his behaviour made
me ridiculous in the eyes of the other man. The gangway between the two
rows of tables at the Vingtieme was hardly more than two feet wide (Rose
and Berthe, in their ministrations, had always to edge past each other,
quarrelling in whispers as they did so), and any one at the table
abreast of yours was practically at yours. I thought our neighbour was
amused at my failure to interest Soames, and so, as I could not explain
to him that my insistence was merely charitable, I became silent.
Without turning my head, I had him well within my range of vision. I
hoped I looked less vulgar than he in contrast with Soames. I was sure
he was not an Englishman, but what WAS his nationality? Though his
jet-black hair was en brosse, I did not think he was French. To Berthe,
who waited on him, he spoke French fluently, but with a hardly native
idiom and accent. I gathered that this was his first visit to the
Vingtieme; but Berthe was off-hand in her manner to him: he had not made
a good impression. His eyes were handsome, but--like the Vingtieme's
tables--too narrow and set too close together. His nose was predatory,
and the points of his moustache, waxed up beyond his nostrils, gave
a fixity to his smile. Decidedly, he was sinister. And my sense of
discomfort in his presence was intensified by the scarlet waistcoat
which tightly, a