Ask For Ronald Standish by Herman Cyril McNeile

Author:Herman Cyril McNeile
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Ask For Ronald Standish
ISBN: 9780755123353
Publisher: House of Stratus
Published: 2013-01-04T00:00:00+00:00

7: The Fourth Bottle

Admittance to the Pointed Shoe presents but few difficulties to those who wish to enter. On a payment of five shillings you become for the evening a guest of the proprietors, and a partaker – at a price – in the festivities, which last as a general rule till about five in the morning.

And here let me state at once that the Pointed Shoe is not one of those reprehensible establishments which sell forbidden liquor out of hours, and are invariably raided, sooner or later, by hordes of detectives in regulation boots.

The Pointed Shoe is run on absolutely legal lines, and furnishes yet another example of the futility of trying to enforce unwanted legislation. Attached to it, though ostensibly quite a separate undertaking, is a wine merchant whose hours for opening are midnight to five a.m. From this gentleman then, on the production of much money, may be obtained a bottle of whatever drink the guest may desire.

To buy an ordinary whisky and soda is impossible; it would render the proprietors, the staff and the consumer liable to execution in the Tower. To buy a bottle of whisky, however, and have twelve whiskies and sodas is a great and meritorious deed. Which is a remarkable state of affairs, but I feel sure it has made somebody happy.

Now, if I have written at some length on this peculiar anomaly of the licensing laws, it is because there may be people who know not the Pointed Shoes of London, and who would rightly regard such an artificial absurdity as an invention on my part. And it is essential that they should realise the conditions that existed at the Pointed Shoe if they are to appreciate one of the cleverest murders ever planned, and still more the brilliant manner in which it was detected.

On the night in question the place was almost full up at two o’clock. The room is long and narrow, and is especially adapted to allow the minimum of people to dance with the maximum of discomfort. Which, as all the world knows, is the goal aimed at by every night club. At the end opposite the entrance door a gaily-uniformed band was playing really well. From table to table moved Captain Coombe – late of His Majesty’s Royal Loamshires – chatting with his guests, most of whom were regular habitués of the place. A haze of tobacco smoke hung like a pall. At times the conversation drowned the music.

Taken as a whole, the crowd was a smart one. Quite a number of the sweet girlish faces that are repeated week by week in the society papers could be seen; a couple of earls, two well-known actors, and a sprinkling of Guardsmen supplied the male attendants. And it was during one of those sudden lulls that sometimes occur that the door was flung open and a large, rather red-faced man came in with a woman. Coombe was at my table at the time, and I heard his muttered “Damn!” And the reason was not far to seek.

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