The Demoniacs by John Dickson Carr

Author:John Dickson Carr [Carr, John Dickson]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

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The Bagnio in Covent Garden

ON THE SOUTH-EAST SIDE of Covent Garden, as the hands of the clock crawled past six, he faced Kitty Wilkes again in another room which also was two storeys above the street-floor like the room at the waxwork.

But all else had changed, including his mood and Kitty’s.

Many persons would have been astonished at this room’s handsome appointments, no less than its fragrant cleanliness. Against a light-brown wainscot, polished until each panel shone, hung large pictures in gilded frames. But a tester-bed stood in the alcove. Below the dressing-table, draped in silk, you could see projecting the edge of a portable wooden washing-stand with a copper bowl and underneath, like a drawer, a wooden bidet which could be drawn out.

Kitty had not failed to observe this.

Stolid and yet timid, even now she would not remove her black cloak with the hood drawn up. She would neither sit down nor touch the tea he had ordered for her together with a sneaker of punch for himself. Her light-grey eyes, set off by dark lashes, regarded him from inside the hood as though from inside a mask.

“I will aid you,” she declared with passion. “Indeed and indeed I will tell you what you wish to know. But, oh, sir, pray make allowance for my natural sensibilities! Don’t be peery; don’t be suspicious; don’t press me!”

“Nobody has pressed you, Kitty. Will you allow this?”

“Oh, indeed I do!”

But she lowered her eyes when she said it, after a quick glance at the door.

“You begged to be conveyed away from Mrs. Salmon’s—”

“Oh, and I am grateful!”

“You begged to be conveyed from there to a place where we might talk privily. Well, that was two hours ago; and I have allowed time for your natural sensibilities. I went below-stairs; I went through the hot-room and the hot-bath …”

“The hot-room?”

“It is in the cellar, and no whit sinister. It is the sweating-room attached to the Oriental baths at this establishment, the only one of its kind in London. I sent a waiter to fetch my good clothes from the other side of the square; and I wear those clothes now, as you see.”

“I do indeed. And you locked the door when you left me! You locked me in here!”

“There was no intent to alarm you, be assured. Yet we are both acquainted with another young woman who has a taste for running away at any awkward or inconvenient time. You had some such seeming about you, or so I thought, from the moment we arrived here.”

“Pray, sir, where are we?”

“It is a bagnio. It is called the Hummums.”

“Yes. I feared as much.”

Kitty turned towards the pewter tea-service on a table beside the fireplace. Then, wringing her hands, she turned back again.

“Most fine gentlemen, I know, think it a point of honour that they must seduce or ravish any servant-maid who shall take their fancy. They even think it comical if she should resist. But I had hoped for better behaviour of you. Sir, sir,

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