“Then this Mr. Davies was a person to be avoided?” I suggested.
“Distinctly so, sir. He was a shrewd and clever gambler, and I feel certain that he was in league with Mr. Audley. Indeed, I know that on the morning after one of their sittings they divided up a thousand pounds between them. It had been won from a man named Raikes, a manufacturer from Sheffield.”
“So they shared the spoils?” I said. “But tell me more about this interesting invalid.”
“Well, sir. He was a grey-bearded man of about sixty I should think, and he walked with difficulty with two sticks. He seemed to lisp when he spoke.”
It struck me at once that the ex-butler’s description would have fitted old Mr. Humphreys very closely, except that Humphreys did not lisp. I had no reason for thinking that Humphreys could have known Graydon, but he might have done so and he certainly was a very keen poker player.
“Had he a rather scraggy, pointed beard and did he wear in his tie a blue scarab pin?” I asked.
“No,” was Belton’s prompt reply, “he had a round beard and I never saw him wearing a scarab pin.”
Now old Mr. Humphreys always wore an antique pin of that description; I never saw him without it. He was immensely proud of it and used to declare it was a mascot that brought him good luck. He had a wonderful story of how he obtained it from some old Egyptian tomb. So the chance of Mr. Davies and old Humphreys being identical seemed a coincidence almost too peculiar to be true. Yet I could not get rid of a suspicion that they were one and the same person.
“You are quite certain that he never met the young gentleman you knew as Mr. Graydon?” I asked Belton.
“I’m quite certain of that, sir. One day Mr. Audley asked me not to say that Mr. Davies had been there, and asked that I would keep his visits a secret from young Graydon as he did not wish them to meet. There was, I remember, a lady named Temperley, who sometimes came with Mr. Davies. She was a stout, dark-eyed, over-dressed woman whom I put down as a retired actress. She had a young, thin rather ugly daughter, a girl with a long face, and protruding teeth. Both mother and daughter seemed to be on terms of close friendship with Mr. Davies.”