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. G.o.dfrey 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 b.u.t.ton close to his chair.
A moment later a tray appeared with tea, cake, bread and b.u.t.ter, 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 a.s.sent, 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 b.u.t.ter and the cake--daintily, but with a good appet.i.te. 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 b.u.t.ton, 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. G.o.dfrey 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. G.o.dfrey 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. G.o.dfrey 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 a.s.sociated 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 circ.u.mstances, 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. G.o.dfrey 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 G.o.dfrey"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.