The Greatest Works of Marie Belloc Lowndes. Marie Belloc Lowndes
Читать онлайн книгу.
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