Fayre looked up suddenly.
“Then Page—?”
Kean nodded.
“Page was the name I gave when I garaged the car at Whitbury. It was there that the woman noticed my hands. I was startled when Grey told me that, I admit.”
He spread out his hands on the blotter before him and regarded them thoughtfully. They were characteristic enough, with their long, clean-boned, sensitive fingers, and hard, muscular palms.
“Fortunately they are not marked in any way, or it might have been awkward. Apart from that, I had covered my tracks well. On the evening of the 23rd I was driven to the station from Staveley. There I took a ticket to London and got into the local train from Staveley Grange to Whitbury. At Whitbury, as you know, there is an hour’s wait before the London express comes in. I had only a small suitcase with me and this I carried to the Whitbury garage, where I picked up the car. I drove to the corner of the Greycross lane, where I was joined by Mrs. Draycott. I had prepared a packet of notes, tied up in batches of one thousand pounds. The uppermost packet only was genuine, the rest were made up of sheets of paper, cut to the correct size.”
He paused for a moment.
“Here I knew I was up against my one real difficulty, that of persuading Mrs. Draycott to go to the farm. Fortunately, the weather was on my side. She hated the country, at the best of times, and had suffered considerably during her short walk to the corner of the lane. So as not to arouse her sister’s suspicions she had come out in the thin dress and slippers she had been wearing in the house, and it had been no joke struggling against a bitter wind in inadequate garments. I put it to her that she would have to count the notes in my presence before I could undertake to hand them over to her and that, in view of the size of the payment, I had no intention of making it without a receipt. I had some argument with her over the last point, but she had seen the notes in the light of my head-lamps and her cupidity had been aroused. Also, she knew that, since the affair of the cheque, I already had a hold over her. It was blowing a gale and bitterly cold and, while she was hesitating, a big branch came down with a crash in the field quite close to us. I think that decided her. I explained that, as we could not go to her sister’s, I proposed to drive her to Leslie’s farm, where we could complete our transaction under cover, telling her that he was away and that I had the run of the place. Leslie had let drop one day that he invariably left either the front or the back door open and I had taken stock of the place when Sybil and I had gone over to tea with him and Cynthia there. I knew that, if, by any chance, we found the door locked I could run the car into the barn and complete my plans there.
“As it turned out, the door was unlocked and I led the way into the sitting-room by the light of an electric torch I had brought with me. Mrs. Draycott sat down at the writing-table and I stood behind her, holding the torch in one hand so that its light fell on the table. I handed her the packet of notes and she began to count them. My revolver was in the right-hand pocket of my overcoat.”
His eyes contracted as though, for a moment, the whole scene were vividly before him.