The Essential Writings of Marie Belloc Lowndes. Marie Belloc Lowndes

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      "My relations with Mr. Pavely were slight, but entirely friendly, even cordial, and what has happened is a very terrible misfortune for me.

      "I came to England in order to raise a loan for a big and important business enterprise. Some French banking friends introduced me to Mr. Pavely, and I soon entered on good relations with him. Our business was on the point of completion, and in a sense mutually agreeable to us, when what I may style our fatal interview took place.

      "Yours with respectful sympathy,

       "Fernando Apra."

      Laura sat down on the sofa. For the first time in her life she felt faint and giddy, and during the few moments that followed the reading of the extraordinary letter she still held in her hand, it was, oddly enough, her peculiar physical state which most absorbed her astonished and anguished mind.

      Then her brain gradually cleared. Godfrey—dead? The thought was horrible—horrible! It made her feel like a murderess. She remembered, with a sensation of terrible self-rebuke and shame, the feeling of almost hatred she had so often allowed herself to feel for her husband.

      And then, before she had had time to gather her mind together sufficiently to face the immediate problem as to how she was to deal with this sinister letter, the door again opened, and Katty Winslow came into the room.

      Katty looked ill as well as worried. There were dark circles round her eyes.

      "Laura! Whatever is the matter? Have you heard anything? Have you news of Godfrey?"

      "I have just had this. Oh, Katty, prepare for bad news!"

      But Katty hardly heard the words. She snatched the tough, thin sheet of paper out of Laura's hand, and going across to the window she began reading, her back turned to Laura and the room.

      For what seemed a long time she said nothing. Then, at last, she moved slowly round. "Well," she said stonily, "what are you going to do about it? If I were you, Laura, I shouldn't let that stupid Pewsbury inspector see this letter. I should go straight up to London with it." She glanced at the clock. "We've time to take the 11.20 train—if you hurry!"

      She felt as if she would like to shake Laura—Laura, standing helplessly there, looking at her, mute anguish—yes, real anguish, in her deep, luminous blue eyes.

      "If I were you," repeated Katty in a hoarse, urgent tone, "I should go straight with this letter to Scotland Yard. It's much too serious to fiddle about with here! We want to know at once whether what this man says is true or false—and that's the only way you can find out."

      "Then you wouldn't tell anybody here?" asked Laura uncertainly.

      "No. If I were you I shouldn't tell any one but the London police. It may be a stupid, cruel hoax."

      Deep in her heart Katty had at once believed the awful, incredible story contained in the letter she still held in her hand, for she, of course, was familiar with the name of Fernando Apra, and knew that the man's account of himself was substantially true.

      But even so, she hoped against hope that it was, as she had just said, a stupid, cruel hoax—the work perchance of some spiteful clerk of this Portuguese company promoter, with whose schemes both she and Godfrey had been so taken—so, so fascinated.

      "Of course I'll go to town with you," she said rapidly. "Let's go up now, and dress at once. I'll order the car."

      There was a kind of driving power in Katty. Her face was now very pale, as if all the pretty colour was drained out of it. But she was quite calm, quite collected. She seemed to feel none of the bewildered oppression which Laura felt, but that, so the other reminded herself, was natural. Katty, after all, was not Godfrey's wife, or—or was it widow?

      The two went upstairs, and Katty came in and helped Laura to dress. "It will only make a fuss and delay if you ring for your maid." She even found, and insisted on Laura putting on, a big warm fur coat which she had not yet had out this winter.

      "You'd better just tell the servants here that you think there may be a clue. It's no good making too great a mystery. They can send on some message of the sort to the Bank; also, if you like, to Mrs. Tropenell."

      A few moments later Laura found herself in the car, and the two were being driven quickly to Pewsbury station.

      "Shall I wire to Oliver Tropenell that we are coming?" asked Katty suddenly.

      And Laura answered, dully, "No. He's in York to-day. They've found out that Godfrey went to York during that week we know he was in London. I only heard of that this morning, or I would have told you."

      Laura will never forget that journey to London, that long, strange, unreal journey, so filled with a sort of terror, as well as pain. Somehow she could not bring herself to believe that Godfrey was dead.

      When they were about half-way there, Katty suddenly exclaimed, "Let me look at that letter again!" And then, when Laura had taken it out of her bag, she asked, "Where's the envelope? The envelope's very important, you know!"

      Laura looked at her helplessly. "I don't know. I can't remember. I've a sort of an idea that I threw the envelope into the fire."

      "Oh, Laura! What a very, very foolish thing to do! Don't you see there must have been a postmark on the envelope? Can't you remember anything about it? What was the handwriting like?"

      Again she felt she would like to shake Laura.

      "The address was typewritten—I do remember that. I thought—I don't know what I thought—I can't remember now what I did think. It looked like a circular, or a bill. But it was marked 'Urgent and Confidential'—or something to that effect."

      On their arrival in London a piece of good fortune befell Laura Pavely. Lord St. Amant had been in the same train, and when he saw her on the platform he at once put himself at her disposal. "Scotland Yard? I'll take you there myself. But Sir Angus Kinross would be out just now. It's no good going there till half-past two—at the earliest. I hope you'll both honour me by coming to luncheon in my rooms."

      Reached by an arch set between two houses in St. James's Street, and unknown to the majority of the people who daily come and go through that historic thoroughfare, is a tiny square—perhaps the smallest open space in London—formed by eight to ten eighteenth-century houses. But for the lowness of the houses, this curious little spot might be a bit of old Paris, a backwater of the Temple quarter, beyond the Louvre and the Hôtel de Ville, which only those tourists who have a passion either for Madame de Sévigné or for the young Victor Hugo ever penetrate.

      It was there that Lord St. Amant, some forty years back, when he was still quite a young man, had found a set of four panelled rooms exactly to his liking. And through the many vicissitudes which had befallen the funny little square, he had always contrived to preserve these rooms, though at last, in order to do so, he had had to become the leaseholder of the house of which they formed a part. But he kept the fact of this ownership to himself and to his lawyers, and it was through the latter that the other rooms—the ground floor and the top floor—were let to various quiet, humble folk. His lawyers also, had found for him the intelligent couple who acted as his caretakers, and who managed to make him extremely comfortable during the comparatively short periods he spent in London each year.

      Although his club was within a minute's walk, Lord St. Amant, very soon after his first occupancy of these rooms, СКАЧАТЬ