The Deductions of Colonel Gore by Lynn Brock

Author:Lynn Brock [Lynn Brock]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2018-08-01T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER XIII

THE Riverside’s page-boy knew all about the Excelsior Hotel. It was in Purley Square, he stated, close to the river—‘not much of a place.’ The shortest way to it—though the boy’s manner conveyed surprise that any guest of the Riverside should require the information—was to descend by the Cliff Railway to Spring Road, take a tram to the corner of Old Cut Road, and ask there for further direction. Shortly before the arrival of afternoon tea Gore solemnly tossed a penny, and, the penny having fallen tails, went to the telephone and rang up Westmouth 1727. The manageress informed him that Mr Frensham was still staying at the Excelsior, but was at the moment out. She undertook to inform him on his return that Colonel Gore would call about half-past four that afternoon in the hope of seeing him.

It was probably most unwise, Gore admitted to himself, to give the fellow any warning. But he was not quite prepared yet to adapt his methods to those with which it was almost certain Frensham would defend himself from this frontal attack. Nor did he think it prudent to declare an open hostility just yet. The supposition that Pickles’s letters were now in Frensham’s hands was the merest of surmise. They were his real object, he reminded himself. His intended negotiations with regard to Arndale’s cheque were to serve merely as a feeler—a means of getting into touch with the enemy and obtaining some definite information about him. If for no other reason than that Frensham had tricked him so audaciously, he meant to recover, if he could, Arndale’s cheque as well as the other things taken from Mrs Barrington’s house. That, however, was a matter of personal vanity, and of quite secondary importance. He rather regretted now that he had been so peremptory with Frensham at their first meeting. No use in taking a high hand with a chap of that sort. The thing to do was to take him quietly—keep him guessing until you had him where you wanted him—and then let him have it.

In this mood of admirable prudence he set out after tea in quest of the Excelsior Hotel. He found it without difficulty—a small, rather dingy hostelry at one side of a forlorn, threadbare little square, so close to the river that the funnels and bridge of a big cargo-boat lying just behind it rose over its roof, illuminated by the flares at her hatches. Though darkness had fallen, the riverside was still busy. All around was the fretful clamour of the cranes, the slithering rattle of tackle, the roar of falling coal, the monotonous bawling of stevedores. Gore sniffed the tang of tar and timber with enjoyment, and smiled because it still had power to catch up his spirit and ship it for the seas of buried treasure in company of Long John Silver.

A slatternly young woman informed him that Mr Frensham was in the billiard-room. There he found Frensham bent over an evening paper spread upon a billiard-table, smoking a cigar.

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