"Pray sit down," he said courteously, "and make yourself comfortable, Mrs. Winslow. It's getting rather chilly."
Her host put on another log as he spoke, and pulled a low, easy chair up close to the fire. And then he himself sat down, at right angles to his attractive guest, in a curiously-shaped winged chair which had once been part of the furniture in the Empress Joséphine's music-room at Malmaison.
Chapter XXIV
It had been a little after three o'clock when Katty Winslow entered Mr. Greville Howard's study—and now it was half-past four. The room had grown gradually darker, but the fire threw out a glimmering light on the faces of the two sitting there.
All at once Katty realised, with a sense of acute discomfiture, that as yet her host had said nothing—nothing, at least, that mattered. He had drawn out of her, with extraordinary patience, courtesy, and intelligence, all that she could tell him—of what had happened before, and about the time of, Godfrey Pavely's death.
She had even told him of the two anonymous letters received by Godfrey Pavely—but with regard to them she had of course deliberately lied, stating that Godfrey had shown them to her, and that she still had no idea from whence they came.
Her listener had made very few comments, but he had shown, quite early in their conversation, a special interest in the personality of Oliver Tropenell. He had even extracted from Katty a physical description of the man she declared to be now Mrs. Pavely's lover, and probable future husband.
At first, say during the first half-hour, she had felt extraordinarily at ease with the remarkable old man who had listened to her so attentively, while the fine eyes, which were the most arresting feature of his delicate, highly intelligent countenance, were fixed on her flushed face. But now, with the shadows of evening falling, she could not see him so clearly, and there came a cold feeling about Katty Winslow's heart. There was very little concerning her own past relations with Godfrey Pavely that this stranger did not now know. She felt as if he had uncovered all the wrappings which enfolded her restless, vindictive, jealous soul. But she herself, so far, had learnt nothing from him.
She began to feel very tired, and suddenly, whilst answering one of his searching, gentle questions, her voice broke, and she burst into tears.
He leant quickly forward, and laid his thin, delicate right hand on hers. "My dear Mrs. Winslow, please forgive me! This has been a painful ordeal for you. I feel like a Grand Inquisitor! But now I am going to bring you comfort—I ought not to say joy. But before I do so I am going to make you take a cup of tea—and a little bread and butter. Then, afterwards, I will show you that I appreciate your generous confidence in telling me all that you have done."
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. Godfrey 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 button close to his chair. A moment later a tray appeared with tea, cake, bread and butter, 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 assent, 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 butter and the cake—daintily, but with a good appetite. 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 button, 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. Godfrey 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. Godfrey 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