Mr. Fortune's PracticeBailey, H. C. (Henry Christopher)
General
Mr. Fortune's Practice
Bailey, H. C. (Henry Christopher)
Detective and mystery stories; Forensic scientists -- Fiction
Reggie went back to his car. When it stopped again in a shabby street
by Covent Garden, Sam allowed himself to cough, his one protest from
first to last: a devoted fellow. Reggie Fortune surveyed the shop of
Demetrius Jacob, which displayed in its dirty window shelves sparsely
covered with bad imitations of old pewter. Reggie frowned at it,
looked at the name again and went in. The place was like a lumber
room. He saw nothing but damaged furniture which had never been good
and little of that until he found out that the dusty thing on which
he was standing was an exquisite Chinese carpet. Nobody was in the
shop, nobody came, though the opening door had rung a bell. He made
it ring again and still had to wait. Then there swept through the
place a woman, a big woman and handsome in her dark oriental way. She
did not see Reggie, she was too hurried or too angry, if her flush
and her frown were anger. She banged the door and was gone.
Reggie rapped on a rickety desk. After a moment an old man shuffled
into the shop, made something like a salaam and said: “You want,
Yes?” Not so old after all, Reggie decided on a second glance. He
shuffled because his slippers were falling off, he was bent because
he cringed, his yellow face was keen and healthy and his eyes bright
under black brows, but certainly a queer figure in that tight frock
coat which came nearly to his heels, and his stiff green skull cap.
“Mr. Jacob?” Reggie said.
“I am Demetrius Jacob,” he pronounced it in the Greek way.
“Well, I am interested in savage religions and cults you know, and
I’m told you are the man for me.” Mr. Jacob again made salaam. “What
I’m after just now is charms and amulets.” He paused and suddenly
rapped out: “Have you got anything from Borneo?”
Demetrius Jacob showed no surprise or any other emotion. “Borneo? Oh,
yes, I t’ink,” he smiled. “Beautiful t’ings.” He shuffled to a
cupboard and brought out a tray which contained two skulls and a
necklace of human teeth.
Reggie Fortune was supercilious. He demanded amulets, stone amulets
and in particular a stone amulet like a cigar with zigzag painting.
Demetrius Jacob shook his head. “I not ’ave ’im,” he said sadly. “Not
from Borneo. I ’ave beautiful _galets colorés_ from France, yes, and
Russia. But not the east. I never see ’im from the east but in the
Museum.”
Reggie Fortune went away thinking that it took a clever fellow to be
as guileless as that.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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