Love and hatred Part 31

The Scotland Yard official looked round for instructions from Sir Angus, and the latter imperceptibly nodded.

"All right--we'll wait five minutes. I've brought some tools along."

"Tools?" The porter stared at him.

"Sometimes, you know, we do find it necessary to burst open a door!"

The five minutes--it was barely more--seemed the longest time Katty had ever spent in waiting.

Lord St. Amant took pity on her obvious unease and anxiety. He walked out with her to the street, and they paced quickly up and down in the cold, wintry air.

"Do you think we shall find anything?" she murmured at last.

He answered gravely, "I confess that the whole thing looks very queer to me. I haven't lived to my time of life without becoming aware that amazing, astounding things _do_ happen. Perhaps I am over-influenced by the fact that years and years ago, when I was a boy, a school-fellow of mine, of whom I was very fond, did shoot himself accidentally with a pistol. He was staying with us, and he had gone on in front of me into the gun-room--and I--I went in and found him lying on the ground--dead."

"How horrible!" murmured Katty. "How very horrible!" and her face blanched.

As they turned yet once more, a taxi drove quickly up to the door of Duke Mansion, and a young, clean-shaven man jumped out.

Instinctively he addressed himself to Sir Angus Kinross: "About this tenant of ours--Mr. Fernando Apra? To the best of my belief he is a perfectly respectable man. He gave a very good reference, that of a big Paris banker, and with us, at any rate, he was quite frank about his business. He has obtained a gambling concession from this new Portuguese Government, and he came to London to try and raise money for the building of a Casino, and so on. He's an optimistic chap, and his notion is to create a kind of Portuguese Monte Carlo. He told us quite frankly that he didn't intend to keep the office going here for more than six months, or possibly a year, and we arranged that he should be able to surrender his three years' lease--we don't let these rooms under a three years' agreement--on the payment of a rather substantial fine. I think the porter is sure to have a key which will admit you into his room--I understand you want to get into his office?"

And then, at last, Sir Angus answered, rather drily, "The porter cannot admit us to the office, for this Mr. Fernando Apra has had a second lock fitted. It seems he never allowed any one access to the room--unless he happened to be there himself."

"Well, he had plans there--plans of this Concession, and he was very secretive, as are so many foreigners. Still, he impressed both me and my father more favourably than do most foreigners we come across. As a matter of fact, we twice lunched with him at the Berkeley. He is a man with a tremendous flow of good spirits--speaking English very well, though of course with a foreign accent. Has he got into any trouble?" he looked curiously at the gentleman standing before him. He was not aware of Sir Angus Kinross's ident.i.ty, but he knew that he was from Scotland Yard.

"We shall know more about that when we have forced open the door of his office. I presume you would like to be present?"

And the young man nodded. A grave, uneasy expression came over his face; he wondered if he had said too much of his pleasant client, and that client's private affairs."

CHAPTER XVIII

They went up the lift in two parties: Sir Angus Kinross, the house agent, and the two men from Scotland Yard; then Lord St. Amant and Katty Winslow alone.

As they were going up, he said kindly, "Are you sure you are wise in doing this? I fear--I fear the worst, Mrs. Winslow!"

With dry lips she muttered, "Yes, so do I. But I would rather come all the same. I'll wait outside the door."

Poor Katty! She was telling herself that it was surely impossible--_impossible_ that G.o.dfrey Pavely should be dead.

Though his vitality had always been low, he had been intensely individual. His self-importance, his egoism, his lack of interest in anything but himself, Katty, and the little world where he played so important a part--all that had made him a forceful personality, especially to this woman who had possessed whatever he had had of heart and pa.s.sionate feeling. She had felt of late as if he were indeed part of the warp and woof of her life, and deep in her scheming mind had grown a kind of superst.i.tious belief that sooner or later their lives would become one.

The thought that he might be lying dead in this great new building filled her with a sort of sick horror. There seemed something at once so futile and so hideously cruel about so stupid an accident as that described in the Portuguese financier's letter.

They stepped out on to a top landing, from which branched off several narrow corridors. The agent led the way down one of these. "Room No. 18?

This must be it--this _is_ it! Look, there are the two keyholes!"

The younger and the brawnier of the two plainclothes detectives came forward. "If you'll just stand aside, gentlemen, for a minute or two, we'll soon get this door open. It's quite an easy matter."

He opened his un.o.btrusive-looking, comparatively small bag. There was a sound of wrenching wood and metal, and then the door swung backwards into the room together with a thick green velvet curtain fixed along the top of the door on a hinged rod.

A flood of wintry suns.h.i.+ne, thrown by the blinking now setting sun of a London January afternoon, streamed into the dark pa.s.sage, and Sir Angus Kinross strode forward into the room, Lord St. Amant immediately behind him.

Katty shrank back and then placed herself by the wall of the pa.s.sage.

She put her hand over her eyes, as if to shut out a dreadful sight, yet all there was to see was an open door through which came a shaft of pallid wintry afternoon light.

For a s.p.a.ce of perhaps thirty seconds, Sir Angus's trained eyes and mind took in what he supposed to be every detail of the oblong room overlooking the now bare tree tops of the Green Park. He noted that the office furniture was extremely good--first-rate of its kind. Also that the most prominent thing in the room was an American roll-top desk of an exceptionally large size.

Placed at right angles right across the office, this desk concealed nearly half the room.

In the corner behind the door was a coat stand, on which there hung a heavy, fur-lined coat, and a silk hat. On the floor was a thick carpet.

The only unbroken s.p.a.ce of wall was covered by a huge diagram map of what looked like a piece of sea sh.o.r.e.

One peculiar fact also attracted the attention of the Commissioner of Police. Both the windows overlooking the Park were wide open, fixed securely back as far as they would go: and on the window seats, comfortably, nay luxuriously, padded, and upholstered in green velvet, there now lay a thick layer of grime, the effect of the fog and rain of the last fortnight. As they stood within the door, in spite of those widely opened windows, there gradually stole on the senses of the four men there, a very curious odour, an odour which struck each of them as horribly significant.

Yet another thing Sir Angus noted in that quick, initial glance; this was that the blind of the narrow window which gave on to the street side of Duke House was drawn down, casting one half of the room in deep shadow.

He turned, and addressing Lord St. Amant in a very low voice, almost in a whisper, he said: "I think we shall find what we have come to seek over there, behind that desk."

Walking forward, he edged round by the side of the big piece of walnut wood furniture.

Then he started back, and exclaimed under his breath, "Good G.o.d! How horrible!"

He had thought to see a body lying at full length on the carpet, but what he did see, sitting upright at the desk, was a stark, immobile figure, of which the head, partly blown away, was sunk forward on the breast....

Great care had been taken to wedge the dead man securely back in the arm-chair, and a cursory glance, in the dim light in which that part of the room was cast, would have given an impression of sleep, not of death.

He beckoned to Lord St. Amant. "Come over here," he whispered, "you needn't go any nearer. Do you recognise that as being the body of G.o.dfrey Pavely?"

And Lord St. Amant, hastening forward, stared with a mixture of curiosity and horror at the still figure, and answered, "Yes. I--I think there's no doubt about it's being Pavely."

"Perhaps you'd better go and tell Mrs. Winslow. Get her away as quick as you can. I must telephone at once for one of our doctors."

Lord St. Amant turned without a word, and made his way through the still open door into the queer, rather dark pa.s.sage.

Katty's face was still full of the strain and anguish of suspense, but she knew the truth by now. Had nothing been found, some one would have come rus.h.i.+ng out at once to tell her so. Three or four minutes had elapsed since she had heard the sudden hush, the ominous silence, which had fallen over them all, in there.

Her lips formed the words: "Then--they've found him?"

And Lord St. Amant nodded gravely. "It looks as if that Portuguese chap had told the simple truth."

"The moment that I read the letter this morning I _knew_ that it was true," she muttered. Then, "I suppose I'd better go away now? They don't want me here."

She began walking towards the lift, and Lord St. Amant, following, felt very sorry for her. "Look here," he said earnestly, "I'm sure you don't wish to go straight back to poor Laura Pavely? Why should you? 'Twould only rack you. I suppose----" He stopped a moment, and she looked up at him questioningly.

"Yes, Lord St. Amant--what is it you suppose?"