Marie Belloc Lowndes

IT was the morning of the 15th of January, and already Godfrey Pavely's disappearance had excited more than the proverbial nine days' wonder.

Laura had gone to her boudoir after breakfast, and she was waiting there, sitting at her writing-table, feeling wretchedly anxious and excited, for all last night she had had a curious, insistent presentiment that at last something was going to happen. She had sent Alice off to her lessons, for there was no object in allowing the child to idle as she had idled during that first bewildering week.

At last she got up, pushed her chair aside, and went and lay down on a sofa. She felt very, very tired; worn out partly by suspense and anxiety, partly by the many interviews with strangers she had been compelled to have during the last ten days.

Oliver Tropenell was again in London, and since he had left Freshley, for the second time, it was as though a strong, protecting arm on which she leant had suddenly been withdrawn from her. And yet she knew that he was engaged upon her business, upon this extraordinary, unutterably strange business of her husband's disappearance.

Oliver wrote to her daily—brief, coldly-worded notes describing what had been, and was being, done both by the police and by the big firm of private detectives who were now also engaged in a search for the missing man. But there was very little to report—so far every one was completely baffled.

Against the wish and advice of both Oliver Tropenell and the Scotland Yard authorities, Laura had offered a reward of a thousand pounds for any information which would lead to the discovery of Godfrey Pavely, alive or dead. It had been Katty's suggestion, and Laura, somehow, had not liked to disregard it.

But now, to-day, Laura, as she moved restlessly this way and that, told herself that she was sorry she had assented to a suggestion that Katty Winslow should come and stay with her during those long days of waiting which were at once so dreary and so full of excitement and suspense. Katty had got hopelessly on Laura's nerves. Katty could not keep silent, Katty could not keep still.

Mrs. Winslow, in a sense, had taken possession of The Chase. It was she who saw to everything, who examined every letter, who went and answered the telephone when the police either at Pewsbury or from London rang up. She was apparently in a state of great excitement and of great anxiety, and some of the critics in the servants' wing said to each other with a knowing smile that Mrs. Winslow might have been Mrs. Pavely, so much did that lady take Mr. Pavely's disappearance to heart!

Katty had not seemed as worried as Laura had seemed the first two or three days, but now she appeared even more upset. Yesterday she had admitted to sleepless nights, and the hostess had felt greatly relieved when her guest had at last confessed that if dear Laura would not mind she would like to stay in bed every morning up to eleven o'clock; nothing ever happened before then.

The only person with whom Laura, during those long, dreary days, felt comparatively at ease was Mrs. Tropenell, for Mrs. Tropenell seemed to understand exactly what she, poor Laura, was feeling during those miserable days of waiting for news that did not come. But Laura did not see very much of the older woman—not nearly as much as she would have liked to do just now, for Mrs. Tropenell disliked Katty, and avoided meeting her.

---

The stable clock struck ten. And Laura suddenly heard the sound of firm steps hurrying down the passage. She got off the sofa, expecting to see the now disagreeably familiar blue uniform and flat blue cap of the Pewsbury Police Inspector. He came up to see her almost every day, but he had never come quite so early as this morning.

She gathered herself together to answer with calm civility his tiresome, futile questions. There was nothing—nothing—she could say that she had not said already as to Godfrey's usual habits, and as to his probable business interests outside Pewsbury. The Inspector had been surprised, though he had tried to hide the fact, to find that Mrs. Pavely knew so very little of her husband's business interests and concerns. The last two times he had been there Katty had been present, and she had been very useful—useful and tactful. Laura, feeling rather ashamed of her late uncharitable thoughts concerning Katty, wished that Katty could be present at the coming interview, but unfortunately Katty was still in bed.

The door opened, and she stood up expectantly.

It was only Preston, the butler. There was a large envelope on the salver he held in his hand.

"It's from the Bank, ma'am. Marked 'Urgent,'" he said.

"Is there an answer?" she asked.

And he hesitated. "We have kept the messenger, ma'am."

Laura knew Mr. Privet's small, neat handwriting—if he marked an envelope "Urgent," then it was urgent.

There were two enclosures—a note and a letter.

She first read the note:—

"Dear Mrs. Pavely,

"I found the enclosed on my arrival at the Bank this morning. It may be important, so I send it on at once.

"And let me take this opportunity, dear Madam, of assuring you of my very sincere sympathy. I, too, have known during the last few days what it was to feel that hope deferred maketh the heart sick.

"Yours respectfully,

"David Privet."

She turned, with only languid interest, to the envelope. The address was typewritten:—

Mrs. G. Pavely,
c/o Messrs. Pavely & Co.,
Bankers,
Pewsbury.

It was marked "Private," "Immediate," but that, as Laura well knew, meant very little. A certain number of times, perhaps half a dozen times in all, during her married life, some unfortunate, humble client of her husband's had written to her a personal appeal. Each of these letters had been of a painful and disagreeable nature, often couched in pitiful, eloquent terms, and Godfrey had not allowed her to answer any one of them save in the most formal, cold way.

This typewritten envelope looked as if it might have come from some distressed tradesman. So she opened the envelope reluctantly, not taking heed, as a different type of woman would have done, to the postmark on it. Indeed, without thinking of what she was doing, she threw the envelope mechanically into the burning fire, and then opened out the large sheet of thin paper.

But, as she looked down at the lines of typewriting, she stiffened into instant, palpitating, horrified attention, for this is what she saw there:

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, had so arranged matters that, when he chose to order it, a cold luncheon or dinner could be sent in at a quarter of an hour's notice. And to-day the arrangement, of which he very rarely availed himself, stood him in good stead.

There are a certain number of people who go through life instinctively taking every chance of advancement or of useful friendship offered to them. Such a person was Katty Winslow.

Even in the midst of her real sorrow and distress, she did not lose sight of the fact that Lord St. Amant, with whom her acquaintance up to the present had been so slight as to be negligible, might prove a very useful friend in what now looked like her immediately dreary future. She was well aware that he was probably, nay, almost certainly, prejudiced against her, for she and Mrs. Tropenell had never been on cordial terms; but she set herself, even now, with this terrible thing which she feared, nay, felt almost sure, was true, filling up the whole background of her mind, to destroy that prejudice. To a certain extent she succeeded, during the few minutes, the precious ten minutes, she secured practically alone with her host, in compassing her wish.

Laura sat down, in the attractive, if rather dark, sitting-room into which Lord St. Amant had shown her, and, blind to everything about her, she was now staring into the fire, oppressed, stunned, by the terrible thing which perchance lay before her.

Lining the panelled walls, which were painted a deep yellow tint, hung a series of curious old colour-prints of London, and, on the writing-table—itself, as Katty's quick eyes had at once realised, a singularly fine piece of eighteenth-century English lacquer—were two portraits. The one was a miniature of a lady in the stiff yet becoming costume of early Victorian days—probably Lord St. Amant's mother; and the other was a spirited sketch of a girl in an old-fashioned riding habit—certainly Mrs. Tropenell forty years ago.

Katty had remained standing, and soon she wandered over to the open door of the room where, with noiseless celerity, the table was being laid for luncheon. It was from there that she almost imperceptibly beckoned to her host. With some prejudice and a good deal of curiosity, he followed her, and together they went over to the deep embrasured window overlooking the tiny square.

There, looking up earnestly into Lord St. Amant's shrewd, kindly face, she said in a low voice: "I want to ask you, Lord St. Amant, to do me a kindness—" she waited a moment, "a true kindness! I want you to arrange that I go to this place, to Duke House, with whoever goes there to find out if the news contained in that horrible letter is true!"

And as he looked extremely surprised, she hurried on, with a little catch in her voice, "Godfrey Pavely was my dear—my very dear, friend. When we were quite young people, when I was living with my father in Pewsbury——"

"I remember your father," said Lord St. Amant, in a softened, kindly tone, and his mind suddenly evoked the personality of the broken-down, not very reputable gentleman to whom the surrounding gentry had taken pains to be kind.

"In those days," went on Katty rather breathlessly, "Godfrey and I fell in love and became engaged. But his people were furious, and as a result—well, he was made to go to Paris for a year, and the whole thing came to an end. Later, after I had divorced my husband, when I was living at Rosedean, it—it——"

She stopped, and tears—the first tears she had shed this terrible morning—came into her eyes.

"I quite understand—you mean that it all began again?"

Lord St. Amant, hardened man of the world though he was, felt moved, really moved by those hurried, whispered confidences, and by the bright tears which were now welling up in his guest's brown eyes.

Katty nodded. "He was unhappy with Laura—Laura had never cared for him, and lately she, Laura——" Again she broke off what she was saying, and reddened deeply.

"Yes?" said Lord St. Amant interrogatively. He felt suddenly on his guard. Was Mrs. Winslow going to bring in Oliver Tropenell? But her next words at once relieved and excessively surprised him.

"You know all about the Beath affair?"

And it was his turn to nod gravely.

"Well, there was something of the same kind thought of—between Godfrey and myself. If—if Laura could have been brought to consent, then I think I may say, Lord St. Amant, that Godfrey hoped, that I hoped——"

Once more she broke off short, only to begin again a moment later: "But I want you to understand—please, please believe me—that neither he nor I was treacherous to Laura. You can't be treacherous to a person who doesn't care, can you? I've only told you all this to show you that I have a right to want to know whether Godfrey is alive or—or dead."

And then Lord St. Amant asked a question that rather startled Katty—and put her, in her turn, on her guard. He glanced down at the letter, that extraordinary typewritten letter, which Laura had handed to him.

"Have you any reason to suppose that Godfrey Pavely was really associated in business with this mysterious man?" he asked.

Looking down into her upturned face he saw a queer little quiver wave across her mouth, that most revealing feature of the face. But she eluded the question. "I did not know much of Godfrey's business interests. He was always very secret about such things."

"She certainly knows there is such a man as Fernando Apra!" he said to himself, but aloud he observed kindly: "I presume Mr. Pavely wrote to you during the early days of his stay in London?"

Katty hesitated. "Yes," she said at last, "I did have a letter from him. But it was only about some business he was doing for me. I was not at Rosedean, Lord St. Amant. I was away on a visit—on two visits."

And then Katty flushed—flushed very deeply.

He quickly withdrew his gaze from her now downcast face, and—came to a quite wrong conclusion. "I see," he said lightly, "you were away yourself, and probably moving about?"

"Yes—yes, I was," she eagerly agreed.

She was feeling a little more comfortable now. Katty knew the great value of truth, though she sometimes, nay generally, behaved as if truth were of no value at all.

In a sense Lord St. Amant had known Katty from her childhood—known her, that is, in the way in which the great magnate of a country neighbourhood, if a friendly, human kind of individual, knows every man, woman and child within a certain radius of his home. He was of course well aware of Mrs. Tropenell's prejudice against Katty, and, without exactly sharing it, he did not look at her with the kindly, indulgent eyes with which most members of his sex regarded the pretty, unfortunate, innocent divorcÉe, to whom Mr. and Mrs. Godfrey Pavely had been so truly kind.

But now, as the upshot of Katty's murmured confidences, her present host certainly acquired a new interest in, and a new sympathy for, Mrs. Winslow. Of course she had not deceived him as completely as she believed herself to have done, for he felt certain that she knew more of Godfrey Pavely's movements, during the early days of his stay in London a fortnight ago, than she admitted. He was also quite convinced that they had met secretly during their joint absence from home.

But Lord St. Amant would have felt a hypocrite indeed had he on that account thought any the worse of Katty Winslow. He told himself that after all the poor little woman did not owe him all the truth! If Godfrey Pavely had indeed come to his death in this extraordinary, accidental way, then Katty, whatever Mrs. Tropenell might feel, was much to be pitied; nice women, even so broad-minded a woman as was his own, close friend, are apt to be hard on a woman who is not perhaps quite—nice!

It was therefore with a good deal of curiosity that he watched his two guests while they ate the luncheon prepared for them.

Laura practically took nothing at all. She tried to swallow a little of the delicious, perfectly cooked cold chicken and mousse-au-jambon, but in the end she only managed to drink the whole of the large glass of water her host poured out for her. Katty, on the other hand, made a good meal, and took her full share of a half-bottle of champagne. As a result she looked, when luncheon was over, more like her usual, pretty, alert self than she had looked yet. Laura grew paler and paler, and at last Lord St. Amant, with kindly authority, insisted on her taking a cup of coffee, and a tiny liqueur glassful of brandy poured into it French fashion.

"I'm afraid," he said feelingly, "that you have a very painful ordeal in front of you, my dear. You won't make it any better by going without food."

But she gazed at him as if she had not understood the purport of his words.