II. — TRAY-BONG SMITH

WHEN in prison at Brixton, a man who has no defence and is waiting his trial on a charge of murder finds time hanging pretty heavily upon his hands. It was due to this ennui of his that “Tray-Bong” Smith, usually an extremely reticent man, condescended to furnish certain particulars which enabled the writer to fill in the gaps of this story which began for our purpose in Chi So’s tea-room, which isn’t more than a hundred metres from the Quai des Fleurs.

Chi So was that rarity, a Jap who posed as a Chinee. He ran a restaurant in Paris, which, without being fashionable, was popular. People used to come across the river to eat the weird messes he prepared, and as many as a dozen motor-cars have been seen parked at the end of the narrow street in which “The Joyous Pedlar”—that was the name of his joint—was situated.

Tray-Bong Smith had never eaten at Chi So’s, but Had been there quite a lot. The restaurant was built on a corner lot and was a fairly old house. It was probably an inn in the days of Louis, for beneath the building was one of the most spacious cellars in Paris. It was a great, vaulted room, about thirty feet from the keystone to the floor, and Chi So had turned this into what he called a “lounge” for his regular customers.

For weeks Tray-Bong Smith had turned into the “lounge” regularly at twelve o’clock every night, to bunk down with a pipe and a few busy thoughts till four o’clock in the morning.

There were lots of reasons why he shouldn’t wander about Paris at night. At this time some sort of international conference was going on, and it was impossible to stroll from the Place de la Concorde to the Italiennes without falling over a Scotland Yard man who would know him.

Whether other visitors would have recognised the gaunt unshaven man with the shabby suit and the discoloured shirt as the man who won the 100 yards’ sprint and the long jump at the Oxford and Cambridge Sports is doubtful. Certain sections of the police, however, knew him very well indeed.

In a little cafe in Montmartre where he spent his evenings they had christened him “Tray-Bong Smith,” because of his practice of replying to all and sundry who addressed him with this cockneyfied version of “très bien.” Even when he discovered that his French was faultless and his “tray bong” an amusing mannerism, the name stuck and it came with him to Chi So’s, where he was accounted a dangerous man.

There were days when he counted his sous, days and nights when he would disappear from view and come back flush with money, changing thousand-franc notes with the nonchalance of a Monte Carlo croupier.

But when he was visible at all he was a regular attendant at Chi So’s.

If he was regular in his habits, so was Cæsar Valentine. On Mondays, Thursdays, and Saturdays, at two o’clock to the minute, he used to make his appearance in what the habitues of Chi So’s called the private box. In one wall, about fifteen feet from the ground, there was a moon-shaped opening, in which had been built, either by Chi So or his predecessor, a sort of