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Updated: June 21, 2025
I was about to invent some elaborate excuse to account for my "delay," when the man seated with his back to me suddenly rose, and, turning abruptly, faced me. I recognized him at once. It was Gastrell, whom I had met at the Hotel Metropol in Geneva. As he stood there before me, with his back half turned to the light of the big bay window, there could be no mistaking him.
Without a doubt, I reflected as I knocked the ashes out of my pipe into the grate, something "queer" was going on, and I had inadvertently got myself mixed up in it. The last "incident" to puzzle me had been that momentary glance of mutual recognition exchanged between the woman I knew only as "Mrs. Gastrell" or "Jasmine Gastrell," as Osborne always spoke of her and Mrs.
I now began to see his object in cultivating the acquaintance of people of rank and wealth; for I had long ago noticed that Jasmine and Hugesson Gastrell never missed an opportunity of becoming acquainted with men and women of position. Also I began to grasp Preston's line of action.
Gastrell' was also in the passenger list, because a cousin of mine should have been on board. At the eleventh hour he was prevented from sailing, and it was upon receipt of a cable from him that I decided to catch the next boat to the Canaries and there meet my wife." I admit that, as he paused, I felt rather "small"; and I believe Osborne felt the same.
Stapleton's other guests were I mentally upbraided myself for having come, or rather, for having let Dulcie come. The first to whom our hostess introduced Dulcie was "Mrs. Gastrell," and directly afterwards she presented to Dulcie "Mrs. Gastrell's cousin," as she called him none other than Hugesson Gastrell, who was standing by.
From him in an evil hour it passed into the hands of a clerical Vandal, Francis Gastrell by name. He was a wealthy man and mean, so he quarrelled with the Stratford rating authorities, who assessed him too heavily, or so he said, for the relief of the poor.
I have watched that fellow Gastrell pretty closely all the evening; I am rather a good judge of men, you know, and I believe him to be an impostor of some kind I can't say just yet of what kind. Anyway, he is the man I met on the Masonic; he can deny it as much as he likes he is. Either he is impersonating some other man, or some other man is impersonating him. Now listen.
I recollected now his saying, when, weeks before, he had spoken of Jasmine Gastrell for the first time, that everybody on board the ship had fallen in love with her, and that he himself had been desperately attracted by her. But I had thought that he spoke in jest; it had not occurred to me that he really thought seriously about the woman.
"Ripping," he answered, "quite ripping," and he went on to tell me the number of beasts he had slain, particulars about them and the way he had outwitted them. I managed to listen for ten minutes or so without yawning, and then suddenly he remarked: "I met a man on board ship, on the way home, who said he knew you feller named Gastrell. Said he met you in Geneva, and liked you like anything.
I had, of course, no proof that Gastrell had committed murder, but in face of what Harold Logan had told Sir Roland Challoner and myself upon his death bed, added to other things I knew, it seemed well within the bounds of possibility that "And are you crossing to France?" he inquired, cutting my train of thought. "Yes," I answered mechanically. "Going to Paris?" "Yes."
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