The next day he had left the Abbey for the Continent, and when, at last, he had come back, he had himself again well in hand....
Only yesterday the shooters had gone by that old seventeenth-century barn, of which nothing now remained but thick low walls, and as he had tramped by the spot, so alone with his memories, if outwardly so companioned, there had swept over his heart, that heart which was still susceptible to every keen emotion, a feeling of agonised regret for what had--and what had not been.
"Ah, Letty," he said huskily, "you"ve been the best friend man ever had!
Don"t you think the time has come for two such old friends as you and I have been never to part? It isn"t as if I had a great deal of time left."
An hour later Lord St. Amant was sitting up in bed, reading the fourth volume of a certain delightful edition of the Memoirs of the Duc de Saint Simon. He was feeling happier than he had felt for a very long time--stirred and touched too, as he had not thought to be again.
Complacently he reminded himself of the successful, the brilliantly successful, elderly marriages he had known in his time. "Twas odd when one came to think of it, but he couldn"t remember one such which had turned out a failure!
Dear Letty--who had known how to pa.s.s imperceptibly from youth to age with such a fine, measured dignity, while retaining so much which had made her as a girl and as an older woman the most delightful and stimulating of companions. What an agreeable difference her presence would make to his existence as he went slowly down into the shadows! He shuddered a little--the thought of old age, of real old age, becoming suddenly, vividly repugnant.
Thank G.o.d, Letty was very much younger than himself. When he was eighty she would be sixty-three. He tried to put away that thought, the thought that some day he would be infirm, as well as old.
He looked up from his book.
How odd to think that Letty had never been in this room, where he had spent so much of his life from boyhood onwards! He longed to show her some of the things he had here--family miniatures, old political caricatures, some of his favourite books--they would all interest her.
He was glad he had arranged that she should have, on this visit, his dear mother"s room. When he had married--close on fifty years ago--his parents had been alive, and later his wife, as the new Lady St. Amant, had not cared to take over her predecessor"s apartments. She had been very little here, for soon, poor woman, she had become an invalid--a most disagreeable, selfish invalid. He told himself that after all he had had a certain amount of excuse for--well, for the sort of existence he had led so long. If poor Adelaide had only died twenty years earlier, and he had married Letty--ah, _then_, he would indeed have become an exemplary character! Yet he had been faithful to Letty--in his fashion....
No other woman had even approached near the sanctuary where the woman of whom now, to-night, he was able to think as his future wife, had at once become so securely enthroned. It had first been a delicious, if a dangerous, relationship, and, later, a most agreeable friendship. During the last few months she had become rather to his surprise very necessary to him, and these last few days he had felt how pleasant it would be to have Letty always here, at the Abbey, either in his company, or resting, reading, or writing in the room where everything still spoke to him of the long-dead mother who had been so dear to him.
Of course they would wait till Oliver and Laura were married--say, till some time in February or March: and then, when those two rather tiresome younger people were disposed of, they, he and Letty, would slip up quietly to London, and, in the presence of perhaps two or three old friends, they would be made man and wife.
He reflected complacently that nothing in his life would be changed, save that Letty would be there, at the Abbey, as she had been the last few days, always ready to hear with eager interest anything he had to say, always with her point of view sufficiently unlike his own to give flavour, even sometimes a touch of the unexpected, to their conversation.
A knock at the door, and his valet came in, and walked close up to the bed.
"It"s a telephone message, my lord. From Sir Angus Kinross--private to your lordship."
"Yes. What is the message?"
Lord St. Amant felt a slight tremor of discomfort sweep over him. What an odd time to send a trunk-call through--at close on midnight.
"Sir Angus has been trying to get on for some time, my lord; there was a fault on the line. Sir Angus would be much obliged if you would meet him at your lordship"s rooms at one o"clock to-morrow. He says he"s sorry to trouble your lordship to come up to London, but it"s very important. He came himself to the telephone, my lord. He asked who I was. I did offer to fetch your lordship, but he said there was no occasion for that--if I would deliver the message myself."
"All right, Barrett."
"Sir Angus begs your lordship not to tell any one that your business to-morrow is with him."
"I quite understand that."
CHAPTER XXVI
"We have solved the mystery of G.o.dfrey Pavely"s death!"
Such were the words with which Sir Angus Kinross greeted Lord St. Amant, when the latter, arriving at his rooms, found the Commissioner of Police already there.
"D"you mean that you"ve run Fernando Apra to earth?"
The speaker felt relieved, and at the same time rather discomfited. He had not a.s.sociated the Commissioner of Police"s summons with that now half-forgotten, painful story. G.o.dfrey Pavely had vanished out of his mind, as he had vanished out of every one else"s mind in the neighbourhood of Pewsbury, and in the last few months when Sir Angus and Lord St. Amant had met they had seldom alluded to the strange occurrence which had first made them become friends.
But now, seeing that the other looked at him with a singular look of hesitation, there came a slight feeling of apprehension over St. Angus"s host.
"Have you actually got the man here, in England? If so, I suppose poor Mrs. Pavely is bound to have a certain amount of fresh trouble in connection with the affair?"
"We have not got the man who called himself Fernando Apra, and we are never likely to have him. In fact, I regard it as certain that we shall not even be able to connect him directly with the murder--for murder it certainly was, St. Amant."
"Murder?"
Lord St. Amant repeated the word reluctantly, doubtfully. He was beginning to feel more and more apprehensive. There was something so strange and so sombre in the glance with which the Commissioner of Police accompanied his words.
During that fortnight when they had so constantly seen one another last year, Sir Angus had never once looked surprised, annoyed--or even put out! There had been about him a certain imperturbability, both of temper and of manner. He now looked infinitely more disturbed than he had done even at the moment when he had first seen G.o.dfrey Pavely"s dead body sitting up in Fernando Apra"s sinister-looking office.
"Yes," he went on in a low, incisive voice, "it was murder right enough!
And we already hold a warrant, which will be executed the day after to-morrow, this next Friday----"
He waited a moment, then uttered very deliberately the words: "It is a warrant for the arrest of Mr. Oliver Tropenell on the charge of having murdered Mr. G.o.dfrey Pavely on or about the 5th of last January."
"I--I don"t understand what you mean! Surely Oliver Tropenell was not masquerading as Fernando Apra?" exclaimed Lord St. Amant. "If one can believe a ma.s.s of quite disinterested evidence, the two men were utterly unlike!"
"That is so, and there was of course a man who masqueraded, and masqueraded most successfully, both in Paris and in London, as Fernando Apra. That man, St. Amant, was----"
Lord St. Amant bent forward eagerly while his mind, his still vigorous, intelligent, acute mind, darted this way and that. What name--whose name--was Sir Angus going to utter?
He was not long left in suspense.
"That man," said Sir Angus slowly, impressively, "was Mrs. Pavely"s brother, a certain Gilbert Baynton, who is, we are informed, the business partner of Mr. Tropenell in Mexico. It was _he_ who masqueraded as Fernando Apra. But it was not he who actually fired the pistol shot which killed G.o.dfrey Pavely----"
When he had heard the name Gilbert Baynton, it was as if a great light had suddenly burst in on Lord St. Amant"s brain. In spite of everything he felt a sharp thrill of relief.
"Good G.o.d!" he exclaimed. "There"s been a terrible mistake--but it"s one that I can set right in a very few minutes. Believe me, you"re on the wrong track altogether! If murder there was--murder, and not manslaughter, which I venture to think much more probable--then Gilbert Baynton was G.o.dfrey Pavely"s murderer. The two men hated one another. It all comes back to me--not only had they a quarrel years ago, but that same quarrel was renewed not long before G.o.dfrey Pavely"s disappearance.
Nothing--_nothing_--would induce me to believe that Oliver Tropenell is a murderer!"
"I"m afraid you"ll soon be brought round to believe it," said Sir Angus ruefully. "I am of course well aware of what you say concerning Gilbert Baynton"s relations to his brother-in-law. We"ve already found all that out, especially as we had a willing witness close to our hand.
Unfortunately--I say unfortunately, St. Amant, for of course I know he is a thorough bad hat--we have irrefutable evidence that this man Baynton did _not_ commit the murder. He was certainly in Paris at the time when G.o.dfrey Pavely was killed in London."
Sir Angus took a turn up and down the room--then he came back to where the other man was sitting.
"You can take it from me, St. Amant, that there has never been, in the whole history of criminal jurisprudence, so far as I am acquainted with it, any crime planned out with such infinite care, ingenuity, and--and--well, yes, I must say it, a kind of almost diabolical cunning.