There was dancing there, but the real attraction of the place lay behind a pair of imposing folding doors. There were two rooms there with green baize covered tables, where vast sums changed hands nightly.
Marguerite Laidlaw, rising at last to go, thrust a quantity of small notes into Tommy’s hands.
“They are so bulkee, Tommee—you will change them, yes? A beeg note. See my so sweet leetle bag, it bulges him to distraction.”
Tommy brought her the hundred pound note she asked for.
Then in a quiet corner, he examined the notes she had given him. At least a quarter of them were counterfeit.
But where did she get her supplies from? To that he had as yet no answer. By means of Albert’s cooperation, he was almost sure that Laidlaw was not the man. His movements had been watched closely and had yielded no result.
Tommy suspected her father, the saturnine M. Heroulade. He went to and fro to France fairly often. What could be simpler than to bring the notes across with him? A false bottom to a trunk—something of that kind.
Tommy strolled slowly out of the Club, absorbed in these thoughts, but was suddenly recalled to immediate necessities. Outside in the street was Mr. Hank P. Ryder, and it was clear at once that Mr. Ryder was not strictly sober. At the moment he was trying to hang his hat on the radiator of a car, and missing it by some inches every time.
“This goddarned hatshtand, this goddarned hatshtand,” said Mr. Ryder tearfully. “Not like that in the Shtates. Man can hang up hishhat every night—every night, sir. You’re wearing two hatshs. Never sheen a man wearing two hatsh before. Mushtbe effectclimate.”