"Oh, indeed. Then where does all your clever scheming come in? Why have you held me back? He went to Sussex. You wouldn't let me follow him. He was out late several nights on his motor car along the North Road. I would have met him and smashed his face in with a life-preserver, but you held me back. What are you driving at? What's the game?"
Grenier went to a cupboard and took out a small box. From this he produced a single check, and several slips of paper on which were written names and signatures.
"That is an old check signed by Philip Anson," he said, coolly. "Here is his signature repeated several times for amusement. It only needs a man of action like you, an accomplished actor like myself, to possess the necessary nerve--the nerve that risks all on a supreme coup--and we will be not only rolling in money, but able to enjoy life pleasantly in any part of the world we select--even in London when the wind changes a little."
"You must talk plainly if you want me to understand you," said Mason, doggedly.
"Very well. You think I am somewhat like Philip Anson at this moment?"
"No, not his image. I would not humbug his friends. I might puzzle them for a moment, at a distance, but let them speak with me and I am done. It is sufficient that I resemble him. But the handwriting, that is good?"
"There I agree with you. My skill in that direction has been admitted by three bank clerks and an Old Bailey judge. And now for the coup. If you intend to kill this young gentleman you may as well kill him to our mutual advantage. There is no gain in being hanged for him unnecessarily, eh?"
"I see I must keep to the point. We must, by some means, inveigle him to a place where you can work your sweet pleasure on him. Ah, that interests you. It must be known that he is going to that place. It must be quite certain that he leaves it."
"Yes, I, Philip Anson the second, will leave it. I will lay my plans quite surely. I will even telegraph my movements to his fiancée and to his agent, Abingdon, who used to be stipendiary magistrate at Clerkenwell. Now, don't interrupt. You spoil my train of thought. Philip Anson will live again for days after you have--er--disposed of him. By that time you will have established such an alibi that an archangel's testimony would not shake it. Then Philip Anson will disappear, vanish into thin air, and with him a hundred thousand or more of his own money, some in gold, but mostly in notes, which will have been changed so often as to defy anyone to trace them. As a precautionary measure, he will go out of his way to annoy or insult the young lady whom he intends to make his wife, and that alone will supply an explanation, of a sort, for his wish to conceal his movements. With proper management, Philip Anson should leave the map without exciting comment for weeks after he is dead, and when the weeks grow into months, people will class his disappearance with the other queer mysteries familiar to everyone who reads the newspapers. Neat, isn't it?"