The Short Forever(76)
“Jet lag.”
“If you say so. You hungry?”
“Almost. You want to order dinner now, or wait for a while.”
“You don’t want to go out?”
“Not really.”
Stone heard an odd noise, and he turned to see an envelope being slid under the door.
“Looks like a message for you,” Dino said.
“That’s not one of the Connaught’s message envelopes,” Stone said, staring at it.
“Well, are you going to open it? The suspense is killing me.” Dino yawned.
Stone retrieved the envelope, which had nothing written on it. He opened it and took out a single sheet of paper. Written in block capitals was a message: AFTER TEN MINUTES TAKE THE WEST LIFT UP ONE FLOOR, TURN LEFT OUT OF THE LIFT, AND WALK TO THE END OF THE CORRIDOR. THE DOOR WILL BE AJAR. It was unsigned. He handed it to Dino, who read it and smiled.
“I love this kind of stuff,” he chuckled. “You have any idea who it’s from? A woman, I’ll bet.”
“I don’t think so,” Stone said. “I called a friend and asked to be introduced to somebody on this side of the water. I think this is it.”
“Whatever you say; I still think it’s a woman. It always is with you.”
After ten minutes, Stone did as he was told. He figured out which sides of the hotel the two elevators were on, then took the west one up a flight and walked down the corridor. A door at the end was ajar. He rapped lightly and walked in. “Hello?”
He was standing in a small vestibule with three doors. One of them opened and a woman smiled at him. “Mr. Barrington?” She was of medium height, wearing a gray business suit and lightweight horn-rimmed glasses, dark hair. Stone thought she’d be quite pretty without the glasses and with a little more makeup. “Yes,” he said.
She opened the door to reveal a large sitting room. “Please come in and have a seat; he’ll be with you shortly. May I get you something to drink?”
“Some fizzy water would be nice,” he replied.
She went to a cabinet at one side of the large room, opened it to reveal a full bar, and poured two glasses of San Pellegrino mineral water.
She returned to where Stone was sitting, handed him a glass, and sat down. “My name is Carpenter,” she said. Her accent was clipped, of indistinguishable class, at least to him.
“How do you do?”
“Very well, thank you.”
“For whom are we waiting?”
“For me, old chap,” a voice said from behind him. He turned to find a man in his mid-thirties entering the room, apparently from the bedroom. He was dressed in a severely cut pin-striped suit, and what Stone imagined was a club tie, though he didn’t know which club. It was dark blue or black, with a single sky-blue stripe.
“Thank you for coming up,” he said briskly. “Sorry to be so cloak-and-dagger, but from what our mutual friend, Sam, told me, you’ve picked up a rather elaborate tail.” His accent was terribly upper-class.
“It seems so.”
“My name is Mason.” He didn’t offer to shake hands. Instead, he went to the bar, poured himself a Scotch, no ice, then sat down opposite Stone. “Sounds as though you’ve gotten yourself mixed up in something.”
“How much did our friend tell you?”
“Why don’t you tell me the whole thing from the very start?”
“Why don’t you tell me what you already know? It would save me repeating myself.”
Mason smiled tightly. “You’re a cautious chap, aren’t you?”
Stone shrugged.
“Apparently, you think somebody wants to sell something he shouldn’t be selling to someone who shouldn’t be buying it. That sum it up?”
“Pretty much.”
“And you’ve fallen out with Stan Hedger, whom you don’t trust anymore, right?”
“Pretty much.”
“But you came to London at his request.”
“Yes.”
“And you’ve attracted the attention of the police. How, may I ask?”
“You may have read in the papers about two gentlemen found dead in the trunk of a car in Hyde Park?”
“I heard of it less than an hour after they were discovered. Are you connected to that incident in some way?”
“One of them was wearing my raincoat.”
Mason burst out laughing. “Goodness, that would put the coppers onto you, wouldn’t it. Who’s the man in charge, if you know his name?”
“Detective Inspector Evelyn Throckmorton.”
“Oh, yes, he’s all right.”
“I was already acquainted with him.”
“How?”
“I used to be a police detective in New York; a friend of mine on the force introduced me to him.”