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Some day I will tell you the whole story but for the moment it were better that it were not told. I will tell you this," he turned round and faced the detective squarely, "Kara tortured and killed my wife." T. X. said no more. Half way through lunch he returned indirectly to the subject. "Do you know Gathercole?" he asked. T. X. nodded.
I think so!" and screening her empty card, wrote on it the name of Gathercole, spelling it passionately in the district that he proposed, about the second extra. But when the youth had murmured that it was hot, and passed, she relapsed into her attitude of hopeless expectation, into her patient, sourish smile.
Half his quarrel with T. X. was that gentleman's curious indifference to the benevolent attitude which Kara had persistently adopted in his dealings with the detective. He rang the bell, this time for his valet. "Fisher," he said, "I am expecting a visit from a gentleman named Gathercole a one-armed gentleman whom you must look after if he comes. I am going out now and I shall be back at 6.30.
"You don't suspect Gathercole, do you?" he asked. "Hardly," said the other drily; "in the first place the man that committed this murder had two hands and needed them both. No, I only want to ask that gentleman the subject of his conversation. I also want to know who was in the room with Kara when Gathercole went in." "H'm," said John Lexman.
If you will allow Gathercole, who will be unconscious of the part he is playing, to act as peacemaker between yourself and myself, I shall feel that his trip, which has cost me a large sum of money, will not have been wasted. "I am, dear Mr. Meredith, "Yours very sincerely, Kara folded the letter and inserted it in its envelope.
"Why obvious?" asked the Chief Commissioner. "Because," answered T. X. Meredith, "the real Gathercole had lost his right arm that was the one error Lexman made." "H'm," the Chief pulled at his moustache and looked enquiringly round the room, "we have to make up our minds very quickly about Lexman," he said. "What do you think, Carlneau?" The Frenchman shrugged his shoulders.
"I found a letter from the Greek, which had been addressed to Buenos Ayres, to await arrival, and then I remembered in a flash, how Kara had told me he had sent George Gathercole to South America to report upon possible gold formations. I was determined to kill Kara, and determined to kill him in such a way that I myself would cover every trace of my complicity.
And Francie would plead with one of her lovers, or with some callow youth: "Now, to please me, do let me introduce you to Miss Pink; such a nice girl, really!" and she would bring him up, and say: "Miss Pink Mr. Gathercole. Can you spare him a dance?" Then Miss Pink, smiling her forced smile, colouring a little, answered: "Oh!
Tell him to come up. Ask him if he minds seeing me in my room." "I told him you were in bed, sir, and he used shocking language," said Fisher. Kara laughed. "Send him up," he said, and then as Fisher was going out of the room he called him back. "By the way, Fisher, after Mr. Gathercole has gone, you may go out for the night.
Gathercole," and Kara came forward with a smile to meet his agent, who, with top hat still on the top of his head, and his overcoat dangling about his heels, must have made a remarkable picture. Fisher closed the door behind them and returned to his duties in the hall below. Ten minutes later he heard the door opened and the booming voice of the stranger came down to him.
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