_The Hôtel et Café Restaurant de Lepanto_ is one of those many places
near, and in the neighbourhood of, Leicester Square, where foreigners
delight to sojourn when in London. Not first-class foreigners,
perhaps, or, at least, not foreigners of large means, but generally
such as come to London to transact business that occupies them for a
short time. As a rule, this establishment is patronised by Spanish
and Portuguese gentlemen of a commercial status, persons who, more
often than not, are connected with the wine trade of those countries;
and it is also frequented by singers and dancers and other _artistes_
who may find themselves--by what they regard as a stroke of
fortune--fulfilling an engagement in our Metropolis. To them, the
Hôtel Lepanto is a congenial abode, a spot where they can eat of the
oily and garlic-flavoured dishes partaken of with so much relish when
at home in Madrid, Lisbon, Seville, or Granada, and here they can
converse in their own tongues with each other and with Diaz Zarates,
the Spanish landlord of the house, to whom half-a-dozen Southern
languages and many _patois_ are known.
The hotel seems to exist entirely for the people of these countries,
since into it no Frenchman, nor Italian, nor German ever comes; they
have their own hostelries of an equally, to them, agreeable nature in
other streets in the neighbourhood. So these Southerners, with the
dark eyes, and coal-black hair, and brown skin, have the little
dining-room with the dirty fly-blown paper, and the almost as dirty
table-covers and curtains, all to themselves; and into it--or to the
passage with the three chairs and the marble-table where, as often as
not, the Señors and Señoras sit and smoke their cigarettes for hours
together, in preference to doing so in the dining-room--no one of
another nation intrudes. If, not having Spanish or Portuguese blood in
his veins, there ever is any one who does so intrude, it is generally
some Englishman of a rashly speculative nature, who wants to try a
Spanish dinner and see what it is like, and who, having done so, never
wants to try another.
And sometimes, as has been the case of late, much to the disgust of
Diaz Zarates, an English detective has made his appearance, and, under
the guise of one of the above speculative individuals essaying an
Iberian meal, has endeavoured to worm secrets out of him about his
patrons and guests. To the disgust of Diaz Zarates of late, because he
knows perfectly well who Dobson is (although that astute individual is
not aware of the landlord's knowledge of his calling), and because,
honestly, he has never heard of any one bearing the name of _Corot_ in
his life.
And it is of such a person with that name, that Dobson has been making
little inquiries whenever he has dropped in to try a Spanish luncheon
or a Spanish dinner.
Seated, a few days after the murder of Walter Cundall, on one of the
three chairs in the passage, and meditatively smoking cigarettes out
of which, as is the case with Spanish-made ones, the tobacco would
frequently fall in a lighted mass on the marble table, was Señor
Miguel Guffanta, as he was inscribed in Diaz's books. Had the Señor
been as carefully washed as the upper classes of Spaniards usually
are, had his linen been as white and clean as the linen usually worn
by the upper classes of Spaniards, and, had he been freshly shaved, he
would, in all probability have presented the appearance of a fine,
handsome man. But he had come downstairs this morning to smoke his
cigarette, without troubling to make his toilette, putting on his
yesterday's shirt, and going through no ablutionary process at all,
and with a thick, heavy stubble of twenty-four hours' growth upon his
cheeks and chin. Still, with all this carelessness, Señor Miguel
Guffanta was a handsome man. He had a dark, Moorish-looking face, the
lines of which were very regular, he had large luminous eyes that,
when he chose, he could open to an enormous extent, and coal-black
hair that curled thickly over his head. His frame was a powerful one;
his height being considerable and his chest broad and deep, and his
long, sinewy, brown hands looked as though their grasp would be a
grasp of iron, if put to their utmost strength. In age he was about
thirty-eight or forty, but he looked younger, because no single gray
hair had appeared either in his luxurious locks or in his long, black
moustache. As he sat there, taking fresh cigarette-papers from his
pocket, and, when he had put some dry, dusty tobacco into them,
twisting both ends up, and smoking them while he gazed meditatively
either at the ceiling of the passage, or into the species of horse-box
that was designated as the "bureau," a stranger might have wondered
what brought the Señor there. Unkempt as he was this morning, there
was something about him, either in the easy grace of his figure, or in
the contemptuous, almost haughty, look in his face, that proclaimed
instantly that this was not a man accustomed to soliciting orders for
wine, or to appearing in Spanish ballets or choruses, or of, in any
way, ministering to other people's amusement.
As he still sat there thinking and smoking, the landlord came down the
passage, and bowing and wishing him "Good morning" in Spanish, entered
his box, and proceeded to make some entries in his books. The Señor
nodded in return, and then made another cigarette and went on with his
meditations; but, when that one was smoked through, he rose and leaned
against the door-post of the bureau, and addressed Zarates.
"And have any more guests arrived since last night," he asked, "and is
the hotel yet full?"
"No more, Señor, no more as yet," the landlord answered him. "_Dios!_
but there is little business doing now."
"That is not well! And he who loves so much our Spanish luncheons and
dinners, our good friend Dobson (he pronounced the name, Dobesoon)
with the heavy, fat face and the big beard--what of him?"
"He is a pig, a fool!" Diaz said, as he ran an unclean finger up a
column of accounts. "He believes me not when I tell him that of his
accursed _Corot_ I know nothing, and that I believe no such man is in
London."
The Señor laughed gently to himself at this answer, and then he said:
"And he has not yet found him?"
"_Dios!_ found him, no! Of that name I never heard before, no, never!
There is no such name!"
"For what does he say he wishes to see this _Corot?_ Is it that he has
a legacy to give him, or has he committed a crime for which this fat
man, this heavy Alguazil, wants to arrest him?"
"_Quien sabé!_ He says he has a little friendly question to ask him,
that is all. He says if he could see him for one moment, he would tell
him all he wants to know. And then he says he must find him. But I do
not think now he will ever find him."
"Nor do I," the Señor said. Then he looked up at the clock, and,
seeing it was past twelve, went to his room, saying that it was time
he prepared himself for the day.
But when he reached that apartment, which was a small room on the
second floor, that looked out on to the back windows of the street
that ran parallel with the one in which the Hôtel Lepanto was
situated, it did not seem as if those preparations stood in any great
need of hurry. The inevitable cigarette-papers were again produced and
the dusty tobacco, and the Señor, throwing himself into the arm-chair
that stood in the corner of the room, again gave himself up to
meditation.
"_Corot_," he said to himself, "_Corot_. How is it that that man has
ever heard the name--what does he know about it, why should he want to
find him? I thought that, outside Los Torros and Puerto Cortes, that
name had never been heard. Walter knew it, and Juanna knew it, and I
knew it, but of others there was no one alive who knew it. Yet here,
is this big, stupid man, in this big, stupid city (where--_por Dios!_
one may be stabbed to death and none find the slayer), with the name
upon his lips. How has he ever heard it, how has he ever known of it?"
He could find no answer to these questions which he asked himself, and
gradually his thoughts went off into another train.
"So, after all," he continued, "his name was not Cundall but Occleve,
and he it was who was this lord, this Penlyn, though that other bears
the name. And he, who inherited all that wealth from the old man, had
no right to it, no not so much right as Juanna--poor Juanna!--and I
had. And now he is gone, and it is with the living that I have to do.
Well, it shall be done, and by my father's blood the reckoning shall
be a heavy one if this lord does not clear himself!"
He rose from his seat, and, going to a cupboard, took from it a suit
of clothes of good, dark material, and after brushing them carefully,
laid them out upon the bed. From a shelf in it he took out a very good
silk hat, which he also brushed, and a pair of nearly new gloves. Then
he rang the bell, and bade the servant who answered it bring him
sufficient hot water for shaving and washing.
As he went through his toilette, which he did very carefully, and
putting on now linen of dazzling whiteness, with which the most
scrupulous person could have found no fault, his thoughts still ran
upon the subject that had occupied his mind entirely for many days.
"There is danger in it, of course," he muttered to himself; "but I am
used to danger; there was danger when Gonzalez provoked me, though it
was not as great as that I stand in now. These English are stupid, but
they are crafty also, and it may be that a trap will be set for me,
perhaps is set already. Well, I will escape from it as I have from
others. And, after all, I have one damning proof in my favour, one
card that, if I am forced to play, must save me! What I have to do,
shall be done to-day. I am resolved!"
His toilette was finished now, he was clean-shaved and well dressed
from head to foot, and the Señor Miguel Guffanta stood in his room a
very different-looking man from the one who had sat, an hour ago,
smoking cigarettes in the hotel passage. Before he left it, he
unlocked a portmanteau, and took from it a pocket-book into which he
looked for a moment, and then he locked his door and descended the
stairs.
"Going out for the day, Señor?" Diaz asked, as he peered out of his
box.
"Yes. I am going to make a call on an English friend. _Adios_."
"_Adios_, Señor."
"It is as hot as Honduras," Señor Guffanta said to himself as he
crossed to the shady side of the street. "I must walk slowly to keep
myself cool."
He did walk slowly, making his way through Leicester Square and down
Piccadilly, and, at nearly the bottom of the latter, turned off to the
right and passed through several streets. Then, when he had arrived at
a house which stood at a corner he stopped. He evidently had been here
before, for he had found his way without any difficulty through the
labyrinth of streets between this house and Leicester Square, and now
he paused for one moment previous to mounting the doorstep. But,
before he did so, he turned away and went a short distance down a
side-street. The big house outside which he was standing formed the
angle of two streets, and ran down the side one that the Señor had now
turned into. At the back of it was a garden, fairly filled with trees,
that ran some distance farther down this street, and into which an
open-worked iron gate led, a gate through which any passerby could
look. It was not a well-kept garden, and in it there was some
undergrowth; and it was at this undergrowth, on the farthest right
hand side, that Señor Guffanta peered for some few moments through the
iron gate.
"It seems the same," he muttered to himself; "nothing appears
disturbed since I was last here." Then he returned to the front of the
house, and mounting the steps knocked at the hall door.
The footman who opened it had no time to ask the tall, well-dressed
foreigner with the handsome face, who was standing before him, what he
required, before the Señor said, in good English:
"Is Lord Penlyn within?"
"Yes, sir," the man answered. "Do you wish to see him?"
"Yes. Be good enough to take him my card, if you please," and he
produced one bearing the name of _Señor Miguel Guffanta_. "Give him
that," he said, "and say that I wish to see him."
The footman motioned him to a seat, and had put the card upon a salver
to take to his master, when the Señor said "Stay, I will put a word
upon it," and, taking a pencil from his pocket, he wrote underneath
his name, "From Honduras."
"He will see me, I think," he said, "when he sees that."
The man bowed and went away, returning a few minutes afterwards to say
that Lord Penlyn would see him, and the Señor followed him into the
room in which so many other interviews had taken place.
Lord Penlyn rose and bowed, and Señor Guffanta returned the bow
gravely, while he fixed his dark eyes intently on the other's face.
"You state on your card, Señor Guffanta, that you are from Honduras. I
imagine, therefore, that you have come about a matter that at the
present moment is of the utmost importance to me?" Lord Penlyn said.
"You refer to the late Mr. Cundall?" the Señor asked. "Yes, I do. Pray
be seated."
"I knew him intimately," Señor Guffanta said. "It is about him and his
murder that I have come to talk."