“Good-morning, sir:  what can I get you?” inquired the landlord pleasantly.

“I’ll have a whisky-and-soda, thanks,” I said.

As he turned round to get it a sudden happy idea flashed into my mind.  I waited until he had placed the glass on the bar and was pouring out the soda, and then inquired carelessly: 

“You don’t happen to know any one of the name of Vivien about here, I suppose?”

He looked up at once.  “Vivien!” he repeated; “well, there’s a Mamzelle Vivien across the road.  D’you mean her?”

I shrugged my shoulders.  “I don’t know,” I said; then, with a coolness which would have done credit to Ananias, I added:  “A friend of mine has picked up a little bag or something with ‘Vivien, Bond Street,’ on it.  He asked me to see if I could find the owner.”

The landlord nodded his head with interest.  “That’ll be her, I expect.  Mamzelle Vivien the palmist—­just across the way.”

“Oh, she’s a palmist, is she?” I exclaimed.  The thought of George consulting a palmist was decidedly entertaining.  Perhaps he wanted to find out whether I was likely to wring his neck.

With a side glance at the chauffeurs, the landlord leaned a little towards me and slightly lowered his voice.  “Well, that’s what she calls ’erself,” he observed.  “Palmist and Clairvoyante; and a smart bit o’ goods she is too.”

“But I thought the police had stopped that sort of thing,” I said.

The landlord shook his head.  “The police don’t interfere with her.  She don’t advertise or anything like that, and I reckon she has some pretty useful friends.  You’d be surprised if I was to tell you some o’ the people I seen going in there—­Cabinet Ministers and Bishops.”

“It sounds like the Athenaeum Club,” I said.  “Do you know what she charges?”

“No,” he replied; “something pretty stiff I guess.  With folks like that it’s a case of make ’ay while the sun shines.”

He was called off at this point to attend to another customer, leaving me to ponder over the information he had given me.  I felt that somehow or other I must make Mademoiselle Vivien’s acquaintance.  A beautiful palmist, for whom George deserted his business at eleven in the morning, was just the sort of person who might prove extremely interesting to me.  Besides, the fact that her name was the same as that of the lady who lived next door to Tommy lent an additional spur to my curiosity.  It might be a mere coincidence, but if so it was a sufficiently odd one to merit a little further investigation.

I drank up my whisky, and after waiting a minute or two, ordered another.  I had just got this and was taking my first sip, when quite suddenly I saw in the mirror the reflection of George emerging from the doorway opposite.

I didn’t stop to finish my drink.  I put down the tumbler, and nodding to the landlord walked straight out into the street.  The pavement was thronged with the usual midday crowd, but pushing my way through I dodged across the road and reached the opposite side-walk just in time to see George stepping into a taxi a few yards farther down the street.