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He's recognised me, thought Jonathan, waiting for the denunciation.
He's seen my photograph, listened to my description.
In a minute he'll stop smiling.
"I'm Dicky Roper," a lazy voice announced as the hand closed round Jonathan's and briefly owned it, "My chaps booked some rooms here. Rather a lot of 'em. How d'you do?" Belgravia slur, the proletarian accent of the vastly rich.
They had entered each other's private space.
"How very good to see you, Mr. Roper," Jonathan murmured, English voice to English voice. "Welcome back, sir, and poor you, what a perfectly ghastly journey you must have had. Wasn't it rather heroic to venture aloft at all? No one else has, I can tell you. My name's Pine. I'm the night manager."
He's heard of me, he thought, waiting. Freddie Hamid told him my name.
"What's old Meister up to these days?" Roper asked, his eyes slipping away to the beautiful woman. She was at the newsstand, helping herself to fashion magazines. Her bracelets kept falling over her hand, while with the other she continually pushed back her hair.
"Tucked up with his Ovaltine and a book, is he? Hope it's a book, must say. Jeds, how you doing, darling? Adores magazines. Addict. Hate the things m'self."
It took Jonathan a moment to realise that Jeds was the woman. Not Jed a single man, but Jeds a single woman in all her varieties. Her chestnut head turned far enough to let them see her smile. It was puckish and good-humoured.
“I'm just fine, darling," she said bravely, as if she were recovering from a knock.
"Herr Meister is unavoidably tied up tonight, I'm afraid, sir," said Jonathan, "but he does enormously look forward to seeing you in the morning when you're rested."
"You English, Pine? Sound it."
"To the core, sir."
"Wise man." The pale gaze wanders away again, this time to the reception desk, where the camel hair coat is filling in forms for Fräulein Eberhardt.
“You proposing marriage to that young lady, Corky?" Roper calls. "That'll be the day," he adds to Jonathan in a lower tone. "Major Corkoran, my assistant," he confides with innuendo.
"Nearly there, Chief!" Corky drawls, and lifts a camel hair arm. He has squared his legs and pushed out his rump like somebody about to play a croquet shot, and there is a tilt to his haunches that, by nature or intent, suggests a certain femininity.
A heap of passports lies at his elbow.
“Only got to copy a few names, God's sake. Not a fifty-page contract, Corks."
"It's the new security, I'm afraid, sir," Jonathan explains. "The Swiss police insist. There seems to be nothing we can do."
The beautiful Jeds has chosen three magazines but needs more. She has perched one slightly scuffed boot pensively on its long heel, with the toe pointing in the air. Sophie used to do the same. Mid-twenties, Jonathan thinks. Always will be.
“Been here long, then, Pine? Wasn't here last time round, was he, Frisky? We'd have noticed a stray young Brit."
"No way," said the blazer, eyeing Jonathan through an imaginary gun slit. Cauliflower ears, Jonathan noticed. Blond hair, going on white. Hands like axheads.
"I make it six months, Mr. Roper, almost to the day."
"Where were you before that?"
"Cairo," Jonathan replied, light as a spark. "The Queen Nefertiti.”
Time passes, like time before a detonation. But the carved mirrors of the lobby do not shatter at the mention of the Queen Nefertiti Hotel, the pilasters and chandeliers hold still.
"Likee, did you? Cairo?"
"Loved it."
"What made you leave the place, then, if you were so high on it?"
Well, you did, actually.
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