“I’m thinking he hasn’t a clue about Rawlings’s whereabouts or what’s happened to the Chinese lasses. He’s cutting his losses.”
“Damn it, Paddy. Without the girls, we have no reason to hold him.”
“What was China Sal saying for herself?”
“Would you care to guess? She knows nothing, of course. And she’s about as Chinese as I am. Born in Poplar, I’d wager, not Peking.”
“Trading everything but information for the police.”
“Sal gave me one thing,” Tennant said, smiling grimly. “Another reason to pay a call at the Topkapi Club.”
“She knows of the place?”
“Not by name, but she said Margot had dealings with ‘the toffs’ at a gentleman’s club.”
“You don’t say, now.”
“I think we can guess which club.”
* * *
The exotic began at the Topkapi Club’s entrance. The doorman might have served an Ottoman sultan. His conical red fez made the towering man look taller still. The ruby lining of his cream-colored cape gleamed in the morning sunlight when he reached to open the carved bronze door for Tennant. Polished black boots and a stiff, red-and-gold collar gave the man a military air as if he were an adjutant to some foreign potentate.
Tennant asked for the club secretary and followed the doorman down a corridor, his steps cushioned by a russet-and-gold runner on the tiled floor. It led to a domed hall whose iron-and-glass ceiling arched overhead. Three wings joined the entrance hallway, boxing in the central rotunda.
When the doorman left to find the club secretary, Tennant walked to the middle of the space and took in his surroundings. Outside, the morning was cloudless, and the room flooded with light. A series of columns with geometric capitals defined the square area beneath the dome. Tiles covered in a floral arabesque of blue, cream, and gold ran around the room from the floor to about shoulder height. A horseshoe arch along the far wall opened into a hallway. A walnut bench with a filigreed back sat next to the entryway.
Tennant opened his folder to the picture on top, Griffiths’s erotic version ofA Slave for the Harem. He smiled and closed the cover.Spot-on.
The inspector turned at the sound of a tentative cough and faced a slight, bespectacled man. His pink-rimmed eyes and twitching nose gave him a hare-like aspect that added to the inspector’s sense that he’d tumbled down a rabbit hole into Wonderland.
“Marvelous, isn’t it?” the man said. “From where you’re standing, ‘every prospect pleases.’”
Tennant finished the quotation, “‘And only man is vile?’ You are the club secretary, I presume?”
“That is correct. Arthur Stewart.”
“Detective Inspector Tennant of Scotland Yard. I have questions about an ongoing investigation. May I have a few moments of your time?”
“Er . . . of course.” He hesitated and glanced around the hall as if he’d forgotten his way. Finally, he said, “Come to my office.”
“Through here?” Tennant extended his hand toward thehorseshoe arch. It led to what Tennant guessed was the back wing of the building.
Stewart shook his head. “This way.” He led the inspector in the opposite direction along a carpeted, paneled hallway.
The Topkapi’s exotic impression proved only skin deep. Stewart named the interior chambers in a clipped staccato. They were rooms typical of most gentlemen’s clubs: hushed, plush, and well-upholstered. Wide doorways opened into a lounge, billiards room, and library furnished with familiar Western comforts. Oil lamps lighted thick carpets, deep leather chairs, and polished mahogany tables.
Tennant asked, “Have you followed the fashion of the Reform Club? Do you have chambers and suites available for your members?”
“Yes . . . some clubmen . . . they have rooms . . . ah, residential premises . . . in the opposite wing.”
Stewart’s phrases darted and halted as if he wanted to consider, and possibly retract, each utterance before he chanced another.
The beginnings of a portrait gallery lined the wall opposite the library door.
“Our chairmen,” Stewart said. “Two to date. Mister John Aubrey and Mister Reginald Bruce. He heads the club today.”
Bruce, a Scotsman, had been painted in resplendent tartan evening wear. He wore a red-and-green kilt crisscrossed with white and yellow lines, a snowy lace neckcloth, and a black jacket with gold buttons running up the cuffs and chest. His attire overwhelmed the man: gray eyes, thinning brown hair, and doughy features formed a forgettable face.
