Chapter XXIII: In Sound of Piccadilly

At the little writing-table set in the window at the Ritz Hotel, overlooking the Park, the stout, pimply-faced man with a choice cigar between his teeth sat scribbling letters with his fountain-pen.

The evening gloom was falling, but he had not troubled to rise to switch on the light.

He had dressed early, for he was going forth to dine with a friend, a Norwegian diplomat, at the Carlton Club, and a small glass of vodka, his favourite spirit, stood at his elbow.

The door opened, and, thinking it was his man, he snappishly gave several orders regarding his clothes without deigning to look up.

“Mr. Sundt,” exclaimed a firm, manly voice, “I make no apology for this intrusion on your privacy. I am here to demand by what right you have denounced me to Captain Berentsen and his daughter as a murderer!”

Peter started, his brows contracted, and he rose indignantly to his feet, recognising in his visitor Richard Jervoise.

“And pray, sir, by what right do you force your way into my room like this?”

“To demand an apology,” said the tall Englishman, “an apology to myself and to Miss Berentsen.”

“To Miss Berentsen!” he echoed. “Are you mad, my dear sir?”

“Mad! Perhaps I am; but, if I am, it is your blackguardly insinuations, your cruel and unjust allegations that have made me so.”

“Well, really, sir,” exclaimed the other pompously, “if your attitude is so insulting, I must ask you to leave my rooms at once. You appear to be labouring under some misunderstanding, that the suspicion upon you as the assassin of Mr. Grinevitch is due to me.”

“You have made that allegation! Can you deny it?”

“I cannot deny it any more than you can deny that you met the man’s wife in secret—that you, her lover, had an assignation with her on the afternoon of the tragedy,” was his answer as he stood near the fireplace, his hands thrust deep in the pockets of his trousers.

“And you actually say this of the pure, good woman whom you have asked to become your wife!” cried Dick, his blood boiling.

“I merely repeat what is the truth. My dear sir, I always believe in facing the truth unflinchingly.”

Dick Jervoise laughed in the man’s face.

“Good!” he said. “Then let me recall an incident which may, perhaps, have passed from your mind. Do you recollect our first meeting that evening up at Vardo? On that night you came to Captain Berentsen’s house for a distinct purpose—to ask him for his daughter’s hand.”

“And instead he gave her in marriage to a man who was a thief, and for whom the police were searching,” observed the red-faced plutocrat.

“Granted,” Dick said; “but do you recollect your conversation with the harbour-master after we had all left? Do you remember how you threatened him with exposure, nay, with ruin, if he refused to compel his daughter to contract an odious marriage with you?”

“What are you saying, sir? Have you taken leave of your senses?”

“No, I’m telling you the plain truth,” was Jervoise’s answer. “Shall I recall you something further? Well, I will. It was you who, by your influence, obtained for Jorgen Berentsen his appointment as harbour-master of Vardo. Why? Because you knew he would be a tool in your hands to falsify the harbour accounts, and to cheat the Government out of dues leviable on your fishing-fleet. For years you have compelled him to do this, but of a sudden, you, knowing your strong position, turned upon him and threatened him with exposure and prosecution if he would not compel Thyra to marry you. For that reason, in order to strengthen your hand, you contrived to compel him to sell to an agent of the Russian Government at Monte Carlo a plan of the defences of the harbour of Vardo.”

“You’re a liar!” exclaimed the other with growing uneasiness. How, he wondered, could this Englishman know that if Jorgen had not told him?

“Listen,” Dick went on; “Captain Berentsen, determined to allow his daughter to marry the man she loved, defied you, and you returned south in your yacht to Havre.”

“She married that scoundrel Grinevitch, and you were jealous of him! Come, why don’t you admit it?” asked Sundt, his anger rising. He was unused to be spoken to in so bold a manner.

“You repeat your allegations, then?” cried Dick. “You assert that I was her husband’s assassin?”

“The evidence I have collected certainly points most conclusively to that.”

“And you, at the same time, cast evil report upon the very woman who has given you her hand! Peter Sundt,” he cried, “you are as big a blackguard as—nay, bigger than—Paul Grinevitch himself!”

“You—you call me a blackguard?” cried the Norwegian in his rather broken English.

“I repeat my words. Your actions have already proved it.”

“Bah! you are jealous that Miss Berentsen should marry me!” he sneered. “Alas! it is the penalty of wealth for poor men to be jealous of one.”

“I am not jealous of you, sir. I should be very sorry indeed to be in your shoes—you who would, by such means, coerce a father into compelling his daughter to enter into a marriage with the man she hates.”

“You lie! She does not hate me!” he cried fiercely.

“I say she does, for to-day, Peter Sundt, she has learnt the truth.”

“What truth?”

“A truth which you will probably deny, of course. You were married before—to a Frenchwoman, Marguerite Meunier.”

“Well? Is it such an extraordinary thing that a man should be a widower?”

“You admit that the poor woman died, somewhere in the south of France, of a slow wasting disease, but that she left a daughter?”

“Why should I deny it?”

“If you do it would be useless,” he said with a smile, “for here”—and he produced the yellow paper which Alza had given him—“here I have the copy of her certificate of birth.”

The red-faced man bit his lip. The shadows had gathered in that blue and gold room, but its occupier still did not switch on the light. He had no desire to reveal his face to the young man who had so suddenly arisen as his deadly enemy.

The reason why Jorgen Berentsen had confessed the conspiracy to defraud the Norwegian Government puzzled him. In that fact alone he foresaw that the tables had already been turned upon him, notwithstanding his great wealth and influence.

“You having acknowledged the existence of your daughter, who must be a grown woman by now, will perhaps extend the courtesy of a meeting with an old friend—providing, of course, that I am not trespassing upon your time,” he added with mock courtesy.

“Friend!” he snapped. “What friend?”

For answer he walked to the door, and, throwing it open, admitted Oscar Nystrom.

The man’s red face fell. He stared at the stranger as though he saw an apparition, yet puzzled to recognise him.

The Dane’s face broadened into a wide grin as, advancing into the room, he exclaimed in Norwegian:

“I did not expect to have the pleasure of meeting you again so soon.”

“Again!” exclaimed Sundt. “Why? I do not recollect ever setting eyes upon you before! For what reason do you claim acquaintanceship with me?”

“In order to recall to you certain facts which you may have forgotten,” was the other’s hard, distinct answer.

“What facts?”

“Facts concerning the death of my friend, Paul Grinevitch. My name is Oscar Nystrom, the man to whom he wrote only half an hour before his death.”

“Nystrom!” cried Sundt, suddenly brightening. “Why, you are the man for whom the police are in search! I—I’ll ring for the hotel people, and give you into custody.” And he made a movement towards the electric bell, adding, “I wish for no conversation with gaol-birds.”

“Ring! Do!” laughed the Dane, urging him to raise the alarm.

“Well,” Sundt asked roughly after a pause, staying his hand, “what do you want? This is some blackmailing scheme or other, I suppose? It won’t be the first time I’ve been bled. Every rich man is, more or less,” he said, laughing harshly.

“I am not here to bleed you, Mr. Sundt,” answered the Dane, speaking in his indifferent English. “I am here to tell you something—something that has apparently slipped your memory. Paul Grinevitch, thief though he was, had one friend—and it was myself.”

“Well?”

“Turn up the light, and see if you recognise me!”

“It is unnecessary. I don’t know you in the least,” snapped the other.

“Then I’ll turn it up, and you shall have a better look,” replied the man quickly, as next instant the pretty room was flooded with a brilliant light.

Sundt’s coarse, red face was livid. Dick saw plainly the effect that Nystrom’s presence had had upon him.

“Now,” exclaimed the Dane determinedly, “listen to what I have to say.” He spoke again in Norwegian, but Dick could nevertheless follow, for had he not previously related, in his broken English, the same facts to that little assembly in Talbot Road? “You believed that your wealth would place you, Peter Sundt, above suspicion, and at the same time, by the possession of your private yacht, you were able to establish an alibi that you were not in Christiania on the day in question.”

“Alibi! What do you mean?” gasped the unhappy man, the colour fading instantly from his fat, flabby face.

“Just this, that one of my companions, a girl named Alza Dresler, has, after long search and tedious inquiry, discovered certain facts, and these, in conjunction with what I myself saw with my own eyes, are sufficient to make plain the truth.”

“What truth?”

“Patience, and I will explain,” cried the man, looking him straight in the face. “I had received a telegram from Grinevitch, dated from Tromso, saying that he would be at the Hotel Victoria at Christiania with his bride on a certain date. I wished to see him privately, and therefore at once took train from Copenhagen and engaged a room at the Victoria, as well as a room in a private lodging. Remember, I knew the police were in search of me, and I took two lodgings, so that, if watched at one, I could take refuge in the other. We do that sometimes, when we know that watch may be set upon the railway stations. Well, on the morning in question, seated in my room above theirs, I witnessed the pair arrive with their trunks, but, not seeing Paul go out again, I hesitated to intrude upon their privacy. All the afternoon I waited. I saw Alza come, and I saw her leave. Then it struck me at last that my friend must be alone. I dared not inquire of the waiter if madame were out, as I did not wish my acquaintanceship with Paul to be known. At last I resolved to slip down upon the floor below, and see if he were alone. I tapped at the door of the sitting-room, but as I did so I heard a scuffle. So I pushed it open, and I saw you—you—Peter Sundt! You had a knife in your hand, and you were standing over Paul’s prostrate body! _You had killed him!_”

“It’s a lie!” cried the stout man, his face now blanched to the lips. “I—why, you never saw me! It’s a lie! An absolute lie!”

“In an instant I recognised the truth. Paul had been killed, yet what could I do? If I raised the alarm I should only be compelled to tell my story to the police, and so betray both the dead man and myself. His poor widow, too! I recollected what a double blow it would be to her if she learnt that the man whom she had married only the day previously was an expert thief! Therefore I slipped back upstairs. Nobody saw me—not even you, Peter Sundt; but I had met you face to face in the corridor only an hour previously.”

“And who, pray, will believe this absurd story of yours?” he asked with well-feigned arrogance.

“I need only tell you that a week ago Alza returned to the Hotel Victoria at Christiania and showed your photograph to the hotel servants. They have recognised you as the man who gave his name as Stenersen, who represented himself as a commercial traveller, and who occupied the room next to the little _salon_ where the tragedy was enacted. Peter Sundt, it is proved up to the hilt that you, too, went first to Havre in your yacht, and then travelled with all speed by Frederikshavn and Gothenburg back to Christiania to await your victim. The police of Christiania have already been informed. An agent of police was with me only at ten o’clock this morning, and I made the same statement to him as I have made to you.”

The man with the pimply face, the plutocrat of the North, stood with his hand resting unsteadily upon the back of the chair. His blanched countenance at last broadened into a forced smile.

“Utterly ridiculous, my dear sir!” he exclaimed in a hollow voice. “What motive do you allege I had in killing this gaol-bird who was your friend?”

“Motive!” echoed the man Nystrom. “You had the strongest motive a man could have—the motive of a fierce and bitter revenge.”

Sundt made a gesture of quick impatience.

“Then, if you deny it, hear my proof!” he went on. “You had, by accident, discovered that Helene Marquet, the beautiful cafe-concert singer who had been deserted by her lover and had in consequence committed suicide before your eyes in the Cafe de Paris at Monte Carlo, was your daughter. Your wife, because of your ill-treatment of her, had placed her child with her sister, a poor woman living in a back street in the Montmartre in Paris. Your daughter had become famous, and had died without knowing that you were her father. But you found out the name of the man who had been responsible for her death—you afterwards discovered him in hiding in Vardo—and, with craft and cunning, you followed him down to the capital and carried out your plan. You took the man’s life for two reasons—one because he had caused your daughter’s untimely end, and the other because he had married Thyra Berentsen, whom you had intended should become your wife. Now,” he added, looking the quivering man straight in the face, “do you deny it?”

The accused hung his head in silence. What could he say? He tried to utter some words—words of extenuation—but they froze upon his lips.

The denunciation by the actual eye-witness was complete, admitting of no defence, no argument, no forgiveness.

Dick Jervoise stood watching the unhappy wretch, whose wild terror next moment was, indeed, fearful to behold. He, however, remained silent.

Enough surely had been said by Oscar Nystrom.

The quiet was complete. The little clock ticked softly upon the mantelshelf, the cab-bells tinkled outside in Piccadilly, and the “honk!” of motorhorns mingled with the dull roar of the London traffic.

But the man by whose hand Paul Grinevitch had fallen stood motionless, staring as though he were already gazing into eternity.