The Mysterious Commission Read Online Free Page B

those domestic exigencies and anxieties which serve to sop up the surplus nervous energies of many men. Again, he had never had a war to speak of; never fought in the warm rain or at the hot gates, bitten by flies. So perhaps – if very obscurely – he was looking for something. Perhaps he was so looking before it was altogether too late; looking for something to satisfy that much younger man who lurks still within many sedate outward presences, who sometimes shouts, soundlessly but urgently, beneath the plummy utterances of established middle age. Or, perhaps again, Honeybath simply obeyed a prompting to make himself a little more interesting to the world than he had been of late. Whatever the truth about Mr X might turn out to be, he promised to provide a story on the strength of which Honeybath could dine out for months ahead.
    Any or all of these things may have been true. Certain it is that, later that afternoon, the painter returned to his modest flat, packed a suitcase, left a note for the woman who came in to do for him, dined early in his favourite Italian restaurant, went back to the studio and did some more extensive getting together of the necessities of his craft there.
    And it was thus that nine o’clock came round.

 
     
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    Punctually the bell rang, and Honeybath went to the door. He expected to be confronted once more by the confidential Peach, but the man before him was the chauffeur. The car, since it was parked under a streetlamp, could be clearly seen, and it was evident that it was empty. There was nothing particularly disconcerting about this, but Honeybath nevertheless found that he was annoyed. He had, after a fashion, got to know Peach, and it had been obscurely in his head that during this drive – whether it was to prove long or short – he could, so to speak, go on with the fellow from where he had left off, and possibly extract at least a few additional scraps of useful information. But perhaps this unexpected state of affairs would actually prove advantageous. He might be able to pump the chauffeur.
    ‘Ah, good evening,’ he said, in a cordial but officer-to-man voice. ‘Have we much of a drive in front of us?’
    ‘Nothing very out of the way, sir. Would that be your gear?’ The chauffeur indicated Honeybath’s suitcase and artist’s paraphernalia on the floor of the studio. ‘They’ll go very well in the boot, sir, and be quite safe there.’
    ‘Excellent. Do please bring them out. And the door simply closes behind you.’ Honeybath had been visited by a brilliant idea, and one making evident how promisingly there lurked in him the spirit of private detection. He would nip out before this fellow, appear to take an aimless half a dozen paces up and down the pavement, and thereby contrive to acquaint himself with the registration number of the waiting car.
    ‘Thank you, sir. But I’ll make you comfortable first.’ The chauffeur stood aside for Honeybath and then – as it were shoulder to shoulder – conducted him to a rear door of the vehicle. ‘If you will be so good, sir,’ he said as he opened it. He might have been a barber of the superior sort, inviting a customer to his seat.
    With automatic docility, Honeybath climbed in. The evening was mild, but he hadn’t sat down before the chauffeur was enveloping him in a large and opulent fur rug. Then he shut the door and turned back for the luggage. Honeybath, with a feeling which was for the moment almost one of good-natured amusement, realized that he had lost that trick. The chauffeur commanded confidence – at least to the extent that, unlike Mr Peach, he appeared to be exactly what he was. But it was clear enough that he, too, had his instructions. And he had been much too smart for that one about the registration number.
    The car, although not of the kind paraded in the interest of prestige and conspicuous expenditure, was large and of the formally conceived sort. The passengers, that is to say, sat in a big