The King of Diamonds Part 25

"Foret is my name."

"Well, Monsieur Foret, I am far too young as yet for either wine or tobacco. I promised my mother I would touch neither until I am twenty-one, and I will keep my word. I think I would like some _cafe au lait_."

"I understand. Your _dejeuner_ will be sent up in ten minutes. By the time you have finished, I will have people here from two or three establishments who will meet all your requirements in the shape of clothes and the rest."

An hour's talk and the payment of checks on account worked wonders.

Before many days had pa.s.sed, Philip was amply provided with raiment. His presence in the hotel, too, attracted no comment whatever. People who saw him coming or going, instantly a.s.sumed that he was staying with his people, while the manager took care that gossip among the employees was promptly stopped.

As for the ragged youth with the diamonds, he was forgotten, apparently.

The newspapers dropped him, believing, indeed, that Isaacstein had worked some ingenious advertising dodge on his own account, and Messrs.

Sharpe & Smith never dreamed of looking for the lost Philip Anson, the derelict from Johnson's Mews, in the Pall Mall Hotel, the most luxurious and expensive establishment in London.

That afternoon, Philip visited the Safe Deposit Company. He had little difficulty, of course, in securing a small strong-room. He encountered the wonted surprise at his youth, but the excellent argument of a banking account and the payment of a year's rent in advance soon cleared the air.

He transferred four of his portmanteaux to this secure environment--the fifth was sent to his hotel. When the light failed, he drove to the East End, and made a round of p.a.w.nbrokers' shops. Although some of the tickets were time-expired, he recovered nearly all his mother's belongings, excepting her watch.

The odd coincidence recalled the inspector's implied promise that he should receive one as a recognition of his gallantry.

How remote, how far removed from each other, the main events in his life seemed to be at this eventful epoch. As he went westward in a hansom, he could hardly bring himself to believe that barely twenty-four hours had elapsed since he traveled to the Mile End Road in company with Mrs.

Wrigley.

And the curious thing was that he felt in no sense awed by the possession of thousands of pounds and the tenancy of palatial chambers in a great hotel. His career had been too checkered, its recent developments too stupendous, to cause him any undue emotion. Existence, for the hour, was a species of well-ordered dream, in which imagination was untrammeled save by the need to exercise his wits in order to keep the phantasy within the bounds, not of his own brain, but of other men's.

At the hotel he found the French valet setting forth a shirt. The man explained that he required a spare set of studs and links.

This reminded Philip that there was still a good deal of shopping to be done. He was about to leave the room for the purpose, when the valet said:

"Another portmanteau has arrived for monsieur. Will you be pleased to unlock it?"

"No," said Philip. "It must remain untouched." He smiled at the thought of the sensation his tattered rags and worn boots would make in that place. Yet, just a week ago, he pa.s.sed through the street outside, bound in the pitiless rain for Johnson's Mews, and bent on suicide.

He walked into Regent Street and made a number of purchases, not forgetting some books. A double silver-mounted photograph stand caught his eye. It would hold the two best pictures he possessed of his father and mother, so he bought it. He also acquired a dispatch box in which he could store his valuables, both jewelry and doc.u.ments, for he had quite a number of receipts, letters and other things to safeguard now, and he did not wish servants' prying eyes to examine everything belonging to him.

When alone in his room, he secured the alb.u.m and locked that special portmanteau again, after stowing therein the letters found beneath Mrs.

Anson's pillow. Soon his mother's dear face smiled at him from a beautiful border of filigree silver. The sight was pleasant to him, soothing to his full mind. In her eyes was a message of faith, of trust, of absolute confidence in the future.

It was strange that he thought so little of his father at this time, but the truth was that his childhood was pa.s.sed so much in his mother's company, and they were so inseparable during the last two years, that memories of his father were shadowy.

Yet the physiognomist would have seen that the boy owed a great deal of his strength of character and well-knit frame to the handsome, stalwart man whose name he bore.

Philip loved his mother on the compensating principle that persons of opposite natures often have an overpowering affinity for each other. He resembled her neither in features nor in the more subtle traits of character.

After a dinner the excellence of which was in nowise diminished by lack of appreciation on his part, he undertook a pilgrimage of curiosity to which he had previously determined to devote the evening.

He wondered unceasingly to whom he was indebted for the good meals he had enjoyed in prison. Now he would endeavor to find out.

A hansom took him to Holloway, but the first efforts of the driver failed to discover the whereabouts of the "Royal Star Hotel."

At last Philip recollected the warder's added direction--"opposite."

He dismissed the cab and walked to the prison entrance. Directly in front he saw a small restaurant called the "Star." Its t.i.tular embellishments were due to the warder's gift of humor.

He entered. A woman was knitting at a cash desk.

"Until yesterday," he said, "you sent food regularly to a boy named Anson, who was confined in the prison----"

"Yes," interrupted the lady. "I on'y heard this mornin' that he was let out."

"Would you mind telling me who paid the bill? I suppose it was paid?"

"Well, as a matter of fact, it was overpaid," was the reply. "You see, the pore lad was remanded for a week, an' Mr. Judd, a man 'oo lives in the Farringdon Road, kem 'ere an' arranged for 'is week's board. Hav' ye heard wot 'appened to 'im?"

Philip's heart was in his mouth, but he managed to answer that the boy was all right; there was no charge against him. Then he escaped into the street. The one man he had forgotten was his greengrocer friend, who had indeed acted the part of the Good Samaritan.

There was some excuse for this, but the boy's abounding good nature would admit of none. He hastened to Farringdon Road with the utmost speed, and found his fat friend putting up the shutters of his shop.

The restaurant next door was open. Philip approached quietly.

"Good-evening, Mr. Judd," he said, holding out his hand.

"Good-evenin', sir," said the greengrocer, his eyes revealing not the remotest idea of the ident.i.ty of the smart, young gentleman who addressed him so familiarly.

"Don't you know me, Mr. Judd?"

"Well, sir, I can't exactly bring to min'----"

"I suppose the good fare you provided for me at Holloway has so altered my appearance that you fail to recognize me again?"

"Wot! Ye don't mean to s'y----'Ere, Eliza, this young gent is the lad I was a-tellin' you of. Remanded till Sat.u.r.day, you was. I saw in the piper last night. Well, there, I'm done!"

By this time Philip was inside the shop, and the stout greengrocer and his equally stout spouse were gazing open-mouthed at this well-dressed youth who had supplanted the thin tatterdemalion so much discussed by them and their neighbors.

Judd and the restaurant keeper were the only men in the locality who could claim actual acquaintance with the boy whose strange proceedings as reported by the newspapers made London gape. Indeed, both men had been interviewed by police and reporters many times. They were living links with the marvelous, a pedestal of common stone for an aerial phantasy.

And now, here he was, back again, dressed like a young gentleman, and hailing Judd as a valued friend. No wonder the greengrocer lost his breath and his power of speech.

But Philip was smiling at him and talking.

"You were the one man out of many, Mr. Judd, who believed in me, and even stuck up for me when you saw me led through the street by a policeman to be imprisoned on a false charge. I did not know until an hour ago that I was indebted to you for an abundance of excellent food while I was remanded in prison. I will not offer to refund you the money you spent. My grat.i.tude will take another form, which you will learn in a few days. But I do want to pay you the ninepence I borrowed. Would you mind asking the proprietor of the restaurant to step in here for a moment? Don't say I am present. I wish to avoid a crowd, you know."

Judd had time to collect his scattered ideas during this long speech.

"Blow the ninepence!" he cried. "Wot's ninepence for the treat I've 'ad?

People I never set eyes on in my life afore kem 'ere an' bought cabbiges, or taters, or mebbe a few plums, an' then they'd stawt: 'Mr.

Judd, wasn't it you as stood a dinner to the Boy King of Diamonds?'

That's wot they christened yer, sir. Or it's: 'Mr. Judd, cahn't yer tell us w'ere that young Morland lives? Sure-ly yer know summat abaht 'im or yer wouldn't hev paid 'is bill.' Oh, it 'as bin a beano. Hasn't it, Eliza?"

"But we never let on a word," put in Mrs. Judd. "We was close as wax. We told none of 'em as how Mr. Judd went to 'Olloway that night, did we, w.i.l.l.yum?"