Gentlemen Formerly Dressed Read Free Page B

admitted. He handed the paper to Edna and pointed out the photo they had been discussing before she’d entered the room. “Perhaps Wil will know someone.”

    Rowland stood to answer the door, but Beresford reached it before him. The caller was a gentleman, dressed for dinner in white tie and tails. His fair hair was thinning slightly but not one strand of it was out of place. Wire-rimmed glasses did nothing to lessen the intensity of the dark blue eyes which were common to all the Sinclair men. He addressed the butler politely but impatiently.
    Beresford turned to Rowland who was now standing beside him, and announced, “A Mr. Wilfred Sinclair, sir.”
    â€œYes, thank you, I can see that. Hello Wil.”
    At first Wilfred moved to shake his brother’s hand, breaking off as he noticed the sling. “Rowly… what in God’s name?”
    â€œWhat are you doing here, Wil?” Rowland asked as Wilfred strode into the room.
    â€œI was told some chap called Sinclair was making enquiries as to where I might be lodging…” He looked again at Rowland’s injured arm. “I expect we have rather a lot to talk about.”
    Rowland showed his brother into the suite’s sitting room. “We’d better have a drink.”
    Aside from Beresford, they were alone in the suite. The others had already gone down to dinner. Rowland had planned to join them once he’d made a few more telephone calls to ascertain where his brother was staying in London. Apparently the fact that he was here, and making such enquiries, had reached Wilfred first.
    It was not until Beresford had served drinks and withdrawn that Wilfred began to interrogate his brother.
    â€œYou drew on the Deutsche Bank account.”
    Rowland nodded. The simple fact that he’d needed to call upon private funds would have told Wilfred that the Old Guard had abandoned him and his companions, and that they were friendless in Germany. He had no doubt that his brother had been preparing to go into Germany after him. He hesitated, unsure where to start.
    Wilfred waited, tapping his fingers restlessly on the scrolled armrest of his chair.
    Rowland began with their arrival in Munich as reluctant agents of the Old Guard, the clandestine organisation of which Wilfred was part. He gave an account of everything they’d been asked to do, and everything they’d done, to stop Eric Campbell—the commander-in-chief of the Australian New Guard—establishing links with the Nazis.
    Wilfred listened silently as Rowland told him about camps in which “enemies of the State” were imprisoned, of the book burnings and the brutal oppression of dissent. He smiled faintly when Rowland recounted how they had finally panicked Campbell into leaving Germany by convincing him that his deputy, Francis de Groot, was mounting a coup to depose him as leader of the Australian Fascist movement.
    Wilfred looked disapprovingly at the sling. “You still haven’t explained what you did to yourself.”
    â€œOh… yes.” Rowland paused, surprised by how much he didn’t want to talk about what had happened to him, how awkward and humiliating he found it.
    â€œRowly…” Wilfred prompted.
    Rowland spoke quietly—without lingering on detail. He recounted the night when the Nazi SA came for him, how they’d broken his arm as a punishment of sorts for a picture he’d painted, beaten him senseless and left him for dead. How he’d regained consciousness only to face another attacker and had been saved by the German girl whose portrait had brought him to the attention of Ernst Röhm and his Stormtroopers in the first place.
    Wilfred stared at him, shocked, appalled and furious. He took a cigarette from the gold case in his pocket and lit it. Rowland waited for him to say something.
    â€œDammit, Rowly! You and your obscene bloody paintings… Why is it that every time I let you out of my