It had been a little after three o'clock when Katty Winslow entered Mr.
Greville Howard's study--and now it was half-past four. The room had
grown gradually darker, but the fire threw out a glimmering light on the
faces of the two sitting there.
All at once Katty realised, with a sense of acute discomfiture, that as
yet her host had said nothing--nothing, at least, that mattered. He had
drawn out of her, with extraordinary patience, courtesy, and
intelligence, all that _she_ could tell _him_--of what had happened
before, and about the time of, Godfrey Pavely's death.
She had even told him of the two anonymous letters received by Godfrey
Pavely--but with regard to them she had of course deliberately lied,
stating that Godfrey had shown them to her, and that she still had no
idea from whence they came.
Her listener had made very few comments, but he had shown, quite early
in their conversation, a special interest in the personality of Oliver
Tropenell. He had even extracted from Katty a physical description of
the man she declared to be now Mrs. Pavely's lover, and probable future
husband.
At first, say during the first half-hour, she had felt extraordinarily
at ease with the remarkable old man who had listened to her so
attentively, while the fine eyes, which were the most arresting feature
of his delicate, highly intelligent countenance, were fixed on her
flushed face. But now, with the shadows of evening falling, she could
not see him so clearly, and there came a cold feeling about Katty
Winslow's heart. There was very little concerning her own past relations
with Godfrey Pavely that this stranger did not now know. She felt as if
he had uncovered all the wrappings which enfolded her restless,
vindictive, jealous soul. But she herself, so far, had learnt nothing
from him.
She began to feel very tired, and suddenly, whilst answering one of his
searching, gentle questions, her voice broke, and she burst into tears.
He leant quickly forward, and laid his thin, delicate right hand on
hers. "My dear Mrs. Winslow, please forgive me! This has been a painful
ordeal for you. I feel like a Grand Inquisitor! But now I am going to
bring you comfort--I ought not to say joy. But before I do so I am going
to make you take a cup of tea--and a little bread and butter. Then,
afterwards, I will show you that I appreciate your generous confidence
in telling me all that you have done."
He waited a moment, and then said impressively, "I am going to put you
in the way to make it possible for you to avenge your dead friend, I
think I may also say _my_ dead friend, for Mr. Godfrey Pavely and I had
some very interesting and pleasant dealings with one another, and that
over many years."
She was soothed by the really kind tone of his low voice, even by the
caressing quality of his light touch, and her sobs died down.
Mr. Howard took his hand away, and pressed a button close to his chair.
A moment later a tray appeared with tea, cake, bread and butter, and a
little spirit lamp on which there stood what looked like a gold
tea-kettle.
"You can put on the light, Denton," and there came a pleasant glow of
suffused light over the room.
"Perhaps you will be so kind as to make the tea?" said Mr. Howard in his
full, low voice.
Katty smiled her assent, and turned obediently towards the little table
which had been placed by her elbow.
She saw that the kettle was so fixed by a clever arrangement that there
was no fear of accident, though the water in it had been brought in
almost boiling on the lacquer tray--a tray which was as exquisitely
choice in its way as was everything else in the room.
Katty, as we know, was used to making afternoon tea. Very deftly she put
three teaspoonfuls of tea into the teapot, and then poured out the
boiling water from the bright yellow kettle. She was surprised at its
weight.
"Yes," said Greville Howard, "it's rather heavy--gold always is. It's
fifteen-carat gold. I bought that kettle years ago, in Paris. It took my
fancy."
He looked at the clock. "We will give the tea three minutes to draw," he
said thoughtfully.
And then he began to talk to her about the people with whom she was
staying, the people who had never seen him, but who had so deep--it now
seemed to her so unreasoning and unreasonable--a prejudice against him.
And what he had to say about them amused, even diverted, Katty, so
shrewd were his thrusts, so true his appreciation of the faults and the
virtues of dear Helen and Tony Haworth. But how on earth had he learnt
all that?
And then, at the end of the three minutes, she poured the tea into the
transparent blue-and-white Chinese porcelain cups.
"No milk, no sugar, no cream for me," he said. "Only a slice of that
lemon."
Greville Howard watched Katty take her tea, and eat the bread and butter
and the cake--daintily, but with a good appetite. He watched her with
the pleasant sensations that most men felt when watching Katty do
anything--the feeling that she was not only very pretty, but very
healthy too, and agreeable to look upon, a most satisfactory, satisfying
feminine presence.
After she had finished, he again touched his invisible button, and the
tray was taken swiftly and noiselessly away.
* * * * *
"And now," he said, "I am going to tell you _my_ part of this strange
story, and you will see, Mrs. Winslow, that the two parts--yours and
mine--fit, and that the vengeance for which I see you crave, is in your
hands. I shall further show you how to arrange so that you need not
appear in the matter if Sir Angus Kinross prove kind, as I feel sure he
will be--to you."
Katty clasped her hands together tightly. She felt terribly moved and
excited. Vengeance? What did this wonderful old man mean?
"Dealers in money," began Mr. Greville Howard thoughtfully, "have to run
their own international police, and that, my dear young lady, is
especially true of the kind of business which built up what I think I
may truly call my fame, as well as my fortune. During something like
forty years I paid a large subsidy each year to the most noted firm of
private detectives in the world--a firm, I must tell you, who have their
headquarters in Paris. Though I no longer pay them this subsidy, for
mine was a one-man business, I still sometimes have reason to employ
them. They throw out their tentacles all over the world, and their
chief, a most intelligent, cultivated man, is by way of being quite a
good friend of mine. I always thoroughly enjoy a chat with him when I am
going through Paris on my way to my villa in the South of France. It is
to this man that the credit of what I am about to tell you, the credit,
that is, of certain curious discoveries connected with the mystery of
Mr. Godfrey Pavely's death, is due."
Greville Howard waited a few moments, and then he spoke again.
"I must begin at the beginning by telling you that when this Fernando
Apra came to see me, I formed two very distinct opinions. The one, which
is now confirmed by what you have told me, was that the man was not a
Portuguese; the other was that he was 'made up.' I felt certain that his
hair was dyed, and the skin of his face, neck and hands tinted. He was a
very clever fellow, and played his part in a capital manner. But I took
him for an adventurer, a man of straw, as the French say, and I believed
that Mr. Godfrey Pavely was being taken in by him. Yet there were
certain things about this Apra that puzzled me--that I couldn't make
out. An adventurer very rarely goes to the pains of disguising himself
physically, for his object is to appear as natural as possible. There
was yet another reason why the adventurer view seemed false. All the
time we were talking, all the time he was enthusing--if I may use a very
ugly modern word--about the prospects of this gambling concession, I had
the increasing conviction that he was not serious, that he was not _out
for business_--that he had come to see me with some other motive than
that of wishing me to take an interest in his scheme."
Greville Howard leant forward, and gazed earnestly into his visitor's
face. "I felt this so strongly that the thought did actually flash
across me more than once--'Is this man engaged in establishing an
alibi?' When I asked him for the name and address of the French
references to which Mr. Pavely had made an allusion in his letter of
introduction, I saw that he was rather reluctant to give me the names.
Still he did do so at last, the bankers being----"
"Messrs. Zosean & Co.," exclaimed Katty. "I have sometimes thought of
going to see them."
"You would have had your journey for nothing. As I shall soon show you,
they were--they still are--an unconscious link in the chain. To return
to Apra, as we must still call him. So little was I impressed by this
peculiar person that I expected to hear nothing more of him or of his
gambling concern. But one day I received a letter from Mr. Godfrey
Pavely, telling me that he himself wished to see me with reference to
the same matter. I saw at once that _he_ really did mean business. He
was very much excited about the prospects of the undertaking."
Mr. Greville Howard paused. He looked attentively at his visitor, but
Katty's face told him nothing, and he continued: "I cross-examined him
rather carefully about this Fernando Apra, and I discovered that he had
only seen the fellow twice, each time rather late in the evening, and by
artificial light. I then told him of my conviction that Apra was playing
a part, but he scouted the idea. Our unfortunate friend was a very
obstinate man, Mrs. Winslow."
"Yes," said Katty in a low voice. "That is quite true."
"And then," went on the other thoughtfully, "Pavely was also exceedingly
susceptible to flattery----"
Katty nodded. This Mr. Greville Howard knew almost too much.
"Well, as you know, he came down again to see me--and the next thing I
heard was that he had disappeared! At once--days before Mrs. Pavely
received that very singular letter--I associated Apra with the mystery.
It was, however, no business of mine to teach the police their business,
though I thought it probable that there would come a moment when I
should have to intervene, and reveal the little that I knew. That moment
came when Mr. Pavely's body was discovered in Apra's office at Duke
House."
Greville Howard straightened himself somewhat in his easy chair.
"I at once wrote, as I felt in duty bound, to Sir Angus Kinross. I had
met him, under rather unfortunate circumstances, some years ago, before
he became Commissioner of Police. That, doubtless, had given him a
prejudice against me. Be that as it may, instead of taking advantage of
my offer to tell him in confidence all I knew, he sent a most unpleasant
person down to interview me. This man, a pompous, ignorant fellow, came
twice--once before the inquest, once after the inquest. I naturally took
a special pleasure in misleading him, and in keeping to myself what I
could have told. But though I was able to give him the impression I
desired to convey, he was not able to keep anything he knew from _me_;
and, at the end of our second interview, he let out that the police had
very little doubt that two men had been concerned in the actual
murder--for murder the police by then believed it to be--of Mr. Godfrey
Pavely."
Greville Howard stopped speaking for a moment.
"Two men?" repeated Katty in a bewildered tone.
And the other nodded, coolly. "Yes, that is the opinion they formed,
very early in the day, at Scotland Yard. They also made up their minds
that it would be one of those numerous murders of which the perpetrators
are never discovered. And, but for you and me, Mrs. Winslow, the very
clever perpetrators of this wonderfully well planned murder would have
escaped scot-free."
He touched his invisible bell, and his man answered it.
"Make up the fire," he said, "--a good lasting fire."
When this had been done, he again turned to Katty. "We now," he said,
"come to the _really_ exciting part of my story. Up to now, I think I
have told you nothing that you did not know."
"I had no idea," said Katty in a low, tense voice, "that the police
believed there were _two_ people concerned with Godfrey's death."
She was trying, desperately, to put the puzzle together--and failing.
"I crossed to France last March," went on Greville Howard musingly,
"and, inspired I must confess by a mere feeling of idle curiosity, I
stopped in Paris two days in order to see, first, Messrs. Zosean, and
secondly Henri Lutin, the head of the Detective Agency with whom, as I
told you just now, I have long been in such cordial relations. I called
first on Henri Lutin and reminded him of the story of Mr. Pavely's
disappearance, and of the subsequent finding of his body in this
Fernando Apra's office. I also informed him that I would go up to a
certain modest sum in pursuit of independent enquiries if he would
undertake to make them. He consented, and as a preliminary, gave me some
information with regard to Messrs. Zosean. Provided with a good
introduction I called on these bankers, and this is what I learnt.
Messrs. Zosean, with that curious incuriousness which is so very French,
scarcely knew anything of what had happened, though they were vaguely
aware that a man had been found killed by accident in their mysterious
client's office, for Fernando Apra was their client, but only--note
this, for it is important--a client of a few weeks' standing. He had
paid in to their bank, some two months before Mr. Pavely's death, the
very considerable sum of one million francs, forty thousand pounds, on
deposit. One of the junior partners saw him--only once, late in the
afternoon."
Greville Howard waited a long moment--then he added impressively: "_And
the man whom they to this day believe to be Fernando Apra bore no
physical resemblance at all to the man who visited me here under that
name_. In fact, the description given by the bankers exactly tallies
with that of another man--of a man whom _you_ described to me about an
hour ago."
"I don't quite understand," faltered Katty.
"Don't you? Think a little, Mrs. Winslow, and you will agree with me
that the real client of Messrs. Zosean was Oliver Tropenell, the man
whom you believe to be the lover and future husband of Mrs. Pavely."
Katty uttered an inarticulate exclamation--was it of surprise or of
satisfaction? Her host took no notice of it, and continued his
narrative:
"One day--I soon found it to have been the day following that on which
the murder of Mr. Pavely was presumably committed--a man who, I feel
sure, was _my_ Fernando Apra, turned up at Messrs. Zosean with a cheque,
the fact that he was coming having been notified to the bank from London
by telephone. He drew out the greater part of the money lodged in the
name of Apra in Messrs. Zosean's bank--not all, mark you, for some eight
thousand pounds was left in, and that eight thousand pounds, Mrs.
Winslow, is still there, undisturbed. I doubt myself if it will ever be
claimed!
"I then, following the plan laid down for me by Henri Lutin, asked
Messrs. Zosean at what hotel Fernando Apra had stayed. I was given two
addresses. These addresses I handed on to my friend the secret enquiry
agent, and the rest of the story belongs to him, for it was Lutin who
discovered all that I am now going to tell you."
Greville Howard stopped speaking. He looked thoughtfully at the woman
who sat ensconced in the low arm-chair opposite him.
He felt rather as a man may be supposed to feel who is about to put a
light to a fuse which will in due course blow up a powder magazine.
There even came over his subtle, tortuous mind a thrill of pity for the
man whom he was about to sacrifice to this pretty woman's desire for
vengeance and--as he could not help seeing--jealous hatred of another
woman who might, for all he knew, be in every way more worthy of his
interest, even of his admiration, than she who sat there looking at him
with gleaming eyes and parted lips.
But Greville Howard, like all his kind, was a fatalist as well as
something of a philosopher. He could not have lived the life he had led,
and done the work which had built up his great fortune, had he been
anything else, and Katty had come at a very fortunate psychological
moment for him--as well as for herself. Greville Howard was becoming
what he had rarely ever been--bored; he was longing consciously for a
fresh interest and for a new companionship in his life. And so:
"Perhaps you will be disappointed at the meagreness of what I am about
to tell you, but you may believe me when I say that it is information
which will make the way of Sir Angus Kinross quite clear, and which may
bring one, if not two, men to the gallows."
Katty gave a little involuntary gasp. But he went on:
"It did not take my friend Lutin very long to discover that a man of the
name of Apra had stayed at each of the hotels indicated to me by the
bankers. He also discovered that 'Apra' had with him a friend named
Dickinson who put down his birthplace as New York. Do you follow me,
Mrs. Winslow?"
"Yes, I think so," she replied hesitatingly.
"At the first hotel, a small, comfortable, rather expensive house in
the Madeleine quarter, Fernando Apra was a tall, dark, good-looking man,
and the other, the New Yorker, was fair and short. Though on the best of
terms they lived very different lives. The American was out a great
deal; he thoroughly enjoyed the gay, lively sides of Paris life.
Fernando Apra on the other hand stayed indoors, reading and writing a
good deal. At last the two men left the hotel, giving out that they were
going to spend the winter in the South of France. But they only stayed a
few days at Lyons and, doubling back to Paris, they settled in the Latin
Quarter on the other side of the river.
"By that time, my dear Mrs. Winslow, _they had exchanged identities_.
The tall, dark man was now Dickinson, and his fair friend had become
Apra! It was Apra who one day told the manager he was going to a fancy
dress ball and asked him to recommend him a good theatrical costumier.
When Lutin ran that costumier to earth, the man at once remembered the
fact that a client he took to be an Englishman had come and had had
himself made up as a Mexican, purchasing also two bottles of
olive-coloured skin stain. Now Apra was out all night after this
extraordinary transformation in his appearance had taken place, but one
of the waiters at the hotel recognised him that same evening at Mabille.
When the man spoke to him, he appeared taken aback, and explained that
he had made a mistake in the day of the fancy dress ball. The next
morning he left the hotel, distributing lavish tips to everybody. But
Dickinson stayed on for a few days, and during those days he received
each day a telegram from England. One of these telegrams is actually in
my possession."
Katty's host got up. He went across to a narrow, upright piece of inlaid
mahogany furniture, and unlocking a drawer, took from it an envelope.
Having opened it, he handed Katty a blue strip of paper on which were
printed the words: "Concession going well" and the signature "G."
Katty stared down at the bit of blue paper, and she flushed. Even she
realised the significance of that "G."
"I think," said her host quietly, "that if you write down from my
dictation certain notes, and hand them, _together with this telegram_,
to the Commissioner of Police, he may be trusted to do the rest."