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Updated: June 21, 2025
"In that case," I said, "the Gastrell who has leased Easterton's house can't be the man you and I have met, because, from what Easterton said, he saw his man quite recently. Ah, here is Lord Easterton," I added, as the door opened and he re-entered. "You know him, don't you?" "Quite well," Jack Osborne answered, "Don't you? Come, I'll introduce you, and then we'll clear this thing up."
Educated at Marlborough and at Trinity but why should I bore you with my story eh, Sir Roland? Why should I bore you with, with ah! The Four Faces! The Four Faces!" he repeated. His eyes rolled strangely, then looked dully up at the ceiling. What did he mean by "The Four Faces"? Did he refer to the medallion worn by Gastrell? His mind was beginning to wander.
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.
'Sir Allan's affairs are in disorder by the fault of his ancestors, and while he forms some scheme for retrieving them he has retreated hither. Piozzi Letters i. 172. By Francis Gastrell, Bishop of Chester, published in 1707. Travels through different cities of Germany, &c.,, by Alexander Drummond.
I then proceeded to Stow-hill, and first paid my respects to Mrs. Gastrell, whose conversation I was not willing to quit. But my sand-glass was now beginning to run low, as I could not trespass too long on the Colonel's kindness, who obligingly waited for me; so I hastened to Mrs.
"By the way, this feller Gastrell who's taken my house tells me he's fond of huntin'," the first speaker whom I knew to be Lord Easterton, a man said to have spent three small fortunes in trying to make a big one remarked. "Said somethin' about huntin' with the Belvoir or the Quorn. Shouldn't be surprised if he got put up for this club later." "Should you propose him if he asked you?"
Another club member besides Easterton had, it seemed, become acquainted with Gastrell through Gastrell's calling at the wrong house by mistake. A coincidence? Possibly. And yet I sucked meditatively at my pipe. Suddenly the telephone rang. Easterton was speaking. "What!" I exclaimed, in answer to the startling information he gave me. "When did he disappear?" "Where was he last seen?"
I had scanned one or two pages and was reading a leading article when Gastrell returned. "You are quite right," he said, offering me his cigarette case. "Miss Challoner is here. After supper last night at the Carlton with Mrs. Stapleton she didn't feel very well, so Mrs. Stapleton persuaded her to come back and sleep here instead of motoring back to Newbury.
A strange atmosphere pervaded the place, an atmosphere of secrecy, of mystery. As we entered, the people at supper, men and women, had glanced up at us furtively, then continued their conversation. They talked more or less under their breath. Gastrell called for a bottle of "bubbly," and about half an hour later we rose. The room was by this time deserted.
"This is to be your fate," Gastrell continued a minute later. "At a spot that we shall presently come to, far out in the country, fifty miles from Paris, you will be taken out, bound as you are, and shot through the head. The revolver has your initials on it look." He held something before my eyes, in such a way that I could see it clearly in the disc of light. It was a pistol's grip.
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