"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."
Katty's host got up. He went across to a narrow, upright piece of inlaid
mahogany furniture, and unlocking a drawer, took from it an envelope.
Having opened it, he handed Katty a blue strip of paper on which were
printed the words: "Concession going well" and the signature "G."
Katty stared down at the bit of blue paper, and she flushed. Even she
realised the significance of that "G."
"I think," said her host quietly, "that if you write down from my
dictation certain notes, and hand them, _together with this telegram_,
to the Commissioner of Police, he may be trusted to do the rest."
CHAPTER XXV
Five quiet weeks slipped by--weeks full of outward, as well as of
inward, happiness at The Chase and at Freshley.
Katty Winslow had come back to Rosedean, and then, without even seeing
Laura, had gone away again almost at once. She was still away when there
took place early in December the gathering together, for the first time
for many years, of a big shooting party at Knowlton Abbey.
Just before joining that pleasant party, Mrs. Pavely spent a week in
London, and certain Pewsbury gossips, of whose very existence she was
unaware, opined that she had gone up to town to buy clothes! In a little
over a month, Godfrey Pavely would have been dead a year, and some of
these same gossips thought it rather strange that Mrs. Pavely should be
going to stay at the Abbey before her first year of widowhood was over.
But the kinder of the busybodies reminded one another that Lord St.
Amant had known the mistress of The Chase from childhood, and being, as
he was, a very good-natured man, no doubt he had thought it would cheer
up the poor lady to have a little change.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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