Criminals -- Fiction; Detective and mystery stories
"You mistake me for someone else, I am afraid," he said, and his voice
was the voice of the man I had met in Geneva—that I would have sworn to
in any court of law, "It is rather remarkable," he went on, his eyes
still set on mine, "that Mr. Osborne, to whom Lord Easterton has just
introduced me, also thought he and I had met before."
"But I am certain I did meet you," Osborne exclaimed in a curious tone,
from where he sat. "I am quite positive we were together on board the
_Masonic_, unless you have a twin brother, and even then—"
He stopped, gazing literally open-mouthed at Hugesson Gastrell, while I,
standing staring at the man, wondered if this were some curious dream
from which I should presently awaken, for there could be no two
questions about it—the man before me was the Gastrell I had met in
Geneva and conversed with on one or two occasions for quite a long time.
Beside, he wore the little medallion of the Four Faces.
Easterton looked ill at ease; so did Osborne; and certainly I felt
considerably perturbed. It was unnatural, uncanny, this resemblance. And
the resemblance as well as the name must, it would seem, be shared by
three men at least. For here was Lord Easterton's friend, Hugesson
Gastrell, whom Easterton had told us he had met frequently in London
during the past month; here was Jack Osborne claiming to be acquainted
with a man named Gastrell, whom he had met on his way home from Africa,
and who, as he put it to us afterwards, was "the dead facsimile" of
Easterton's guest; and here was I with a distinct recollection of a man
called Gastrell who—well, the more I stared at Easterton's guest the
more mystified I felt at this Hugesson Gastrell's declaring that he was
not my Geneva companion; indeed that we had never met before, and that
he had never been in Geneva.
The dinner was not a great success. Gastrell talked at considerable
length on all sorts of subjects, talked, too, in a most interesting and
sometimes very amusing way; yet all the time the thought that was in
Osborne's mind was in my mind also—it was impossible, he was thinking,
that this man seated at dinner with us could be other than the
individual he had met on board ship; it was impossible, I was thinking,
that this man seated at dinner with us could be other than the
individual I had met in Geneva.
Easterton, a great talker in the club, was particularly silent. He too
was puzzled; worse than that—he felt, I could see, anxious and
uncomfortable. He had let his house to this man—the lease was already
signed—and now his tenant seemed to be, in some sense, a man
of mystery.
We sat in the big room with the bay window, after dinner, until about
half-past ten, when Gastrell said he must be going. During the whole
time he had been with us he had kept us entertained by his interesting
conversation, full of quaint reminiscences, and touched with flashes
of humour.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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