"Well! This is funny, old chap," I cried turning to my friend. "Here's
actually the man Dawson himself."
"Dawson!" gasped the man against whom the monk had warned me. "Let's
have him in. But, by Gad! we must be careful of what we say, for, if
all is true of him, he has the cuteness of Old Nick himself."
"Leave him to me," I said. Then turning to Glave, said, "Show the
gentleman in."
And we both waited in breathless expectancy for the appearance of the
man who knew the truth concerning the carefully-guarded past of Burton
Blair, and who, for some mysterious reason, had concealed himself so
long in the guise of an Italian.
A moment later he was ushered in, and bowing to us exclaimed with a
smile--
"I suppose, gentlemen, I have to introduce myself. My name is Dawson--
Richard Dawson."
"And mine is Gilbert Greenwood," I said rather distantly. "While my
friend here is Reginald Seton."
"I have heard of you both from our mutual friend, now unfortunately
deceased, Burton Blair," he exclaimed; and sank slowly into the
grandfather armchair which I indicated, while I myself stood upon the
hearthrug with my back to the fire in order to take a good look at him.
He was in well-made evening clothes, over which he wore a black
overcoat, yet there was nothing about him suggestive of the man of
strong character. He was of middle height, and his age I judged to be
nearly fifty. He wore gold-framed round eye-glasses with thick pebbles,
through which he seemed to blink at us like a German professor, and his
general aspect was that of a sedate and studious man.
Beneath a patchy mass of grey-brown hair his forehead fell in wrinkled
notches over a pair of sunken blue eyes, one of which looked upon the
world in speculative wonder, while the other was grey, cloudy, and
sightless. Straggling eyebrows wandered in a curiously uncertain manner
to their meeting-place above a somewhat fleshy nose. Below the cheeks
and beard and moustache blended in a colour-scheme of grey. From the
sleeves of his overcoat, as he sat there before us, his lithe, brown
fingers shot in and out, twisting and tapping the padded arms of the
chair with nervous persistence, and in a manner which indicated the high
tension of the man.
"My reason for intruding upon you at this hour," he said half
apologetically, yet with a mysterious smile upon his thick lips, "is
because I only arrived back in London this evening and discovered that
my friend Blair has, by his will, left in my hands the control of his
daughter's affairs."
"Oh!" I exclaimed in pretended surprise as though it were news to me.
"And who has said this?"
"I have received information privately," was his evasive answer. "But
before proceeding further, I thought it best to call upon you, in order
that we might from the outset thoroughly understand each other. I know
that both of you have been Blair's most intimate and kindest friends,
while owing to certain somewhat curious circumstances I have been
compelled, until to-day, to remain entirely in the background, his
friend in secret as it were. I am also well aware of the circumstances
in which you met, of your charity to my dead friend and to his
daughter--in fact, he told me everything, for he had no secrets from me.
Yet you on your part," he continued, glancing at us from one to the
other with that single blue eye, "you must have regarded his sudden
wealth as a complete mystery."
"We certainly have done," I remarked.
"Ah!" he exclaimed quickly in a tone of ill-concealed satisfaction.
"Then he has revealed to you nothing!"
And in an instant I saw that I had inadvertently told the fellow exactly
what he most desired to know.