XVII

Jim loved London, the noise and the smell of it. He loved its gentle thunders, its ineradicable good-humour, its sublime muddle. Paris depressed him, with its air of gaiety and the underlying fierceness of life’s struggle. There was no rest in the soul of Paris. It was a city of strenuous bargaining, of ruthless exploitation. Brussels was a dumpy undergrown Paris. Berlin a stucco Gomorrah, Madrid an extinct crater beneath which a new volcanic stream was seeking a vent.

New York he loved, a city of steel and concrete teeming with sentimentalists posing as tyrants. There was nothing quite like New York in the world. Dante in his most prodigal mood might have dreamt New York and da Vinci might have planned it, but only the high gods could have materialized the dream or built to the master’s plan. But London was London⁠—incomparable, beautiful. It was the history of the world and the mark of civilization. He made a detour and passed through Covent Garden.

The blazing colour and fragrance of it! Jim could have lingered all the morning in the draughty halls, but he was due at the office to meet Mr. Salter.

Almost the first question that the lawyer asked him was:

“Have you investigated Selengers?”

The identity of the mysterious Selengers had been forgotten for the moment, Jim admitted.

“You ought to know who they are,” said the lawyer. “You will probably discover that Groat or his mother are behind them. The fact that the offices were once the property of Danton rather supports this idea⁠—though theories are an abomination to me!”

Jim agreed.

There were so many issues to the case that he had almost lost sight of his main object.

“The more I think of it,” he confessed, “the more useless my search seems to me, Mr. Salter. If I find Lady Mary, you say that I shall be no nearer to frustrating the Groats?”

Mr. Septimus Salter did not immediately reply. He had said as much, but subsequently had amended his point of view. Theories, as he had so emphatically stated, were abominable alternatives to facts, and yet he could not get out of his head that if the theory he had formed to account for Lady Mary Danton’s obliteration were substantiated, a big step would have been taken toward clearing up a host of minor mysteries.

“Go ahead with Selengers,” he said at last; “possibly you may find that their inquiries are made as much to find Lady Mary as to establish the identity of your young friend. At any rate, you can’t be doing much harm.”