Love and hatred

by Marie Belloc Lowndes

"I then, following the plan laid down for me by Henri Lutin, asked Messrs. Zosean at what hotel Fernando Apra had stayed. I was given two addresses. These addresses I handed on to my friend the secret enquiry agent, and the rest of the story belongs to him, for it was Lutin who discovered all that I am now going to tell you."

Greville Howard stopped speaking. He looked thoughtfully at the woman who sat ensconced in the low arm-chair opposite him.

He felt rather as a man may be supposed to feel who is about to put a light to a fuse which will in due course blow up a powder magazine. There even came over his subtle, tortuous mind a thrill of pity for the man whom he was about to sacrifice to this pretty woman's desire for vengeance and—as he could not help seeing—jealous hatred of another woman who might, for all he knew, be in every way more worthy of his interest, even of his admiration, than she who sat there looking at him with gleaming eyes and parted lips.

But Greville Howard, like all his kind, was a fatalist as well as something of a philosopher. He could not have lived the life he had led, and done the work which had built up his great fortune, had he been anything else, and Katty had come at a very fortunate psychological moment for him—as well as for herself. Greville Howard was becoming what he had rarely ever been—bored; he was longing consciously for a fresh interest and for a new companionship in his life. And so:

"Perhaps you will be disappointed at the meagreness of what I am about to tell you, but you may believe me when I say that it is information which will make the way of Sir Angus Kinross quite clear, and which may bring one, if not two, men to the gallows."

Katty gave a little involuntary gasp. But he went on:

"It did not take my friend Lutin very long to discover that a man of the name of Apra had stayed at each of the hotels indicated to me by the bankers. He also discovered that 'Apra' had with him a friend named Dickinson who put down his birthplace as New York. Do you follow me, Mrs. Winslow?"

"Yes, I think so," she replied hesitatingly.

"At the first hotel, a small, comfortable, rather expensive house in the Madeleine quarter, Fernando Apra was a tall, dark, good-looking man, and the other, the New Yorker, was fair and short. Though on the best of terms they lived very different lives. The American was out a great deal; he thoroughly enjoyed the gay, lively sides of Paris life. Fernando Apra on the other hand stayed indoors, reading and writing a good deal. At last the two men left the hotel, giving out that they were going to spend the winter in the South of France. But they only stayed a few days at Lyons and, doubling back to Paris, they settled in the Latin Quarter on the other side of the river.

"By that time, my dear Mrs. Winslow, they had exchanged identities. The tall, dark man was now Dickinson, and his fair friend had become Apra! It was Apra who one day told the manager he was going to a fancy dress ball and asked him to recommend him a good theatrical costumier. When Lutin ran that costumier to earth, the man at once remembered the fact that a client he took to be an Englishman had come and had had himself made up as a Mexican, purchasing also two bottles of olive-coloured skin stain. Now Apra was out all night after this extraordinary transformation in his appearance had taken place, but one of the waiters at the hotel recognised him that same evening at Mabille. When the man spoke to him, he appeared taken aback, and explained that he had made a mistake in the day of the fancy dress ball. The next morning he left the hotel, distributing lavish tips to everybody. But Dickinson stayed on for a few days, and during those days he received each day a telegram from England. One of these telegrams is actually in my possession."