May Fair : $b being an entertainment purporting to reveal to gentlefolk the real state of affairs existing in the very heart of London during the fifteenth and sixteenth years of the reign of His Majesty King George the Fifth: together with suitable reflections on the last follies, misadventures and galanteries of these charming peopleArlen, Michael
History
May Fair : $b being an entertainment purporting to reveal to gentlefolk the real state of affairs existing in the very heart of London during the fifteenth and sixteenth years of the reign of His Majesty King George the Fifth: together with suitable reflections on the last follies, misadventures and galanteries of these charming people
Arlen, Michael
Great Britain -- History -- George V, 1910-1936 -- Fiction; London (England) -- Fiction
Oh, yes, Julian Raphael was certainly watched by the police, but he was
generally somewhere else while the police were watching him. And Miss
Manana Cohen was certainly his young lady-love, and she loved him and
lived with him but he wouldn’t marry her because of another principle he
had, that it was wrong for a man of independent spirit to have a wife of
his own. Nice boy, Mr. Julian Raphael. But it appeared that he loved
Miss Manana very decidedly and discouraged competition. It also appeared
that before he had taken to the downward path he had been a juggler with
knives on the music-halls. Knives again. Tarlyon thought that a pretty
good joke at the time, but he didn’t enjoy it nearly so much later on.
We had been pottering about down there several days and George was just
beginning to think of a nice shave and a bath when we hit on our first
clue. The clue was walking up a grimy side-street by the East India
Docks.
“Oh, pretty!” says George. And she certainly was. She hadn’t seen us.
She was in a hurry.
“We follow,” I said.
“Naturally,” says George. “A nice girl like that! What do you take me
for, a Y. M. C. A.?”
We followed. She walked fast, did Miss Manana. And it was queer, how she
lit up that grimy God-forsaken street. The way she was walking, you
might have taken her for a young gentlewoman “doing” the East End in a
hurry. Tall, lithe, quietly dressed--Julian Raphael’s property! And he’d
made her scream with pain.
“Now what?” snapped George.
She had been about twenty yards ahead of us. Street darkish, deserted,
lined with warehouses, and all closed because it was a Saturday
afternoon. Suddenly, no Manana Cohen. We slipped after her quick as you
like. She had dived down a narrow passage between the warehouses. We
were just in time to see the tail of her skirt whisking through a door
in the wall a few yards up--and just in time to cut in after her.
“Oh!” she gasped. We must have looked a couple of cut-throats. And it
was dark in there. I was panting--nothing like a sailor’s life for
keeping you thoroughly out of training, unless it’s a soldier’s. But
George was all there, being a good dancer.
“Miss Cohen, I believe?” he asks. All in whispers. She just stared at
us. George didn’t want to scare her any more than I did. He was gay, in
that mood of his when he seems to be laughing more at himself than at
anyone else. But she just stared at us. She was tall, as women go, but
we simply towered over the poor child. Then she recognised me and went
as red as a carnation. I couldn’t think why. Tarlyon said comfortingly:
“There, there!”
Then she panted all in a jumble: “I’m sorry I was rude to you the other
night. Really I am. Please go away now, please!”
“I’m afraid we can’t do that,” I whispered. “We want----”
George, with his foot, gently shut the door behind us. We were in the
passage of the house or whatever it was. It was pitch-dark. I lit
another match.
“But what is it, what do you want?” the girl moaned.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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