“Why not? I find all your allegations most amusing,” and across his dark handsome face there spread a good-humoured smile.
His was a face that I could never forget. At one moment its expression was kindly and full of bonhomie, the next it was hard and unrelenting—the face of an eccentric criminal.
“To me they are the reverse of amusing,” I said. “I allege that on the night of Wednesday, November the seventh last, I was passing your house in Stretton Street, Park Lane, when your man, Horton, invited me inside, and—well, well—I need not describe what occurred there, for you recollect only too vividly—without a doubt. But what I demand to know is why you asked me in, and what happened to me after you gave me that money?”
“Money! I gave you money?” he cried. “Why, man alive, you’re dreaming! You must be!”
“I’m not dreaming at all! It is a hard fact. Indeed, I still have the money—five thousand pounds in bank notes.”
Oswald De Gex looked at me strangely. His sallow face coloured slightly, and his lips compressed. I had cornered him. A little further firmness, and he would no doubt admit that we had met at Stretton Street.
“Look here, Mr. Garfield,” he said in a changed voice. “This is beyond a joke. You now tell me that I presented you with five thousand pounds.”
“I do—and I repeat it.”
“But why should I give you this sum?”
“Because I assisted you in the commission of a crime.”