Chapter Twenty One.“Worse than Death.”The tall old fellow looked at me with his grey eyes and shook his head.“Burton Blair knew rather too much,” he answered evasively. “He had, it seemed, been raised to chief mate of theAnnie Curtis, when I left her, and Poldo, the man who had held dukes and cardinals and other great men to ransom, worked patiently under him. Then after a bad go of fever Poldo died, and strangely enough gave—so Blair declared—the pack of cards with the secret into his hands. Dicky Dawson, however, who was also on board as bo’sun, and who had lived half his life on Italian brigs in the Adriatic, declares that this story is untrue, and that Blair stole the little bag containing the cards from beneath Poldo’s pillow half an hour before he died. That, however, may be the truth, or a lie, yet the facts remain, that Poldo must have let out some portion of his secret in the delirium of the fever and that the little cards passed into Blair’s possession. Three weeks after the Italian’s death, Blair, on landing at Liverpool, carrying with him the cards and the snap-shot photograph, set out on that very long and fatiguing journey up and down all the roads in England, in order to find me, and learn from me the key to the secret of the outlaws which I held.”“And when at last he found you, what then?”“He alleged solemnly that Bruno had given it to him as a dying gift, and that his reason for seeking me was because the old outlaw had, before he died, requested to see the photograph from his sea-chest, and looking upon it for a long time, had said to himself reflectively in Italian, ‘There lives in that house the only man who knows my secret.’ For that reason Blair evidently secured the picture after the Italian’s death. On arrival here he showed me the cards, and promised me a thousand pounds if I would reveal the Italian’s confidences. As the man was dead, I saw no reason to withhold them, and in exchange for a promise to pay the amount I told him what he wanted to know, and among other matters explained the rearrangement of the cards, so that he could decipher them. The key to the cipher I had learnt on that festival when I had discovered Poldo writing upon a pack of cards a message, evidently intended for the Cardinal himself at Rome, for I have since established the fact that the outlaw and the ecclesiastic were in frequent but secret communication prior to the latter’s death.”“But this man Dawson must have profited enormously by the revelation made by Blair,” I remarked. “They seem to have been most intimate friends.”“Of course he profited,” Hales replied. “Blair, possessing this remarkable secret, went in deadly fear of Dicky, the bo’sun, who might declare, as he had already done, that he had stolen it from the dying man. He was well aware that Dawson was an unscrupulous sailor of the very worst type, therefore he considered it a very judicious course, I suppose, to go into partnership with him and assist in the exploration of the secret. But poor Blair must have been in the fellow’s hands all through although it is plain that the gains Blair made were enormous, while those of Dicky have been equal, although it seems probable that the latter has lived in absolute obscurity.”“Dawson feared to come to England,” Reggie remarked.“Yes,” answered the old man. “There was a rather ugly incident in Liverpool a few years ago—that’s the reason.”“There is no negative evidence regarding the actual gift of the pack of cards to Blair by this reformed outlaw, is there!” I inquired.“None whatever. For my own part I believe that Poldo gave them to Blair together with instruction to return ashore and find me, because he had showed him many little kindnesses during repeated illnesses. Poldo, on giving up his evil ways, had become religious and used to attend sailors’ Bethels and missions when ashore, while Blair was, as you know, a very God-fearing man for a sailor. When I recollect all the circumstances, I believe it was only natural that Poldo should give the dead Cardinal’s secret into the hands of his best friend.”“The spot indicated is near Lucca in Tuscany,” I remarked. “You say that this outlaw, Poldo Pensi, had been there and made an investigation. What did he find?”“He found what the Cardinal had told him he would find. But he never explained to me its nature. All he would tell was that the secret would render its possessor a very wealthy man—which it certainly did in Blair’s case.”“The connexion of the Church between the late Cardinal Sannini and Fra Antonio, the Monk of Lucca, is strange,” I observed. “Is the monk, I wonder, in possession of the secret? He certainly had some connexion with the affair, as shown by his constant consultations with the man Dawson.”“No doubt,” remarked Reggie, turning over the little cards idly. “We’ve now got to discover the exact position of both men, and at the same time prevent this fellow Dawson from obtaining too firm a hold on Mabel Blair’s fortune.”“Leave that to me,” I said confidently. “For the present our line of action is quite clear. We must investigate the spot on the bank of the Serchio and discover what is hidden there.” Then turning to Hales, I added, “In the record it is, I notice, distinctly directed ‘First find the old man who lives at the house by the crossways.’ What does that mean? Why is that direction given?”“Because I suppose that when the record was written upon these cards I was the only other person having any knowledge of the Cardinal’s secret—the only person, too, possessing the key to the cipher.”“But you affected ignorance of all this at first,” I said, still viewing the old fellow with some suspicion.“Because I was not certain of yourbona-fides,” he laughed quite frankly. “You took me by surprise, and I was not inclined to show my hand prematurely.”“Then you have really told us all you know?” Reggie said.“Yes, I know no more,” he replied. “As to what is contained at the spot indicated in the record, I am quite ignorant. Remember that Blair has paid me justly, even more than he stipulated, but as you are well aware he was a most reserved man concerning his own affairs, and left me in entire ignorance.”“You can give us no further information regarding this one-eyed man who seems to have been Blair’s partner in the extraordinary enterprise?”“None, except that he’s a very undesirable acquaintance. It was Poldo who nicknamed him ‘The Ceco.’”“And the monk who calls himself Fra Antonio?”“I know nothing of him—never heard of any such person.”It was upon the tip of my tongue to inquire whether the old man had a son, and if that son’s name was Herbert, recollecting, as I did, that tragic midnight scene in Mayvill Park. Yet, fortunately perhaps, I was prompted to remain silent, preferring to conceal my knowledge and to await developments of the extraordinary situation.Still a fierce, mad jealousy was gnawing at my heart. Mabel, the calm, sweet girl I loved so well, and whose future had been entrusted to me, had, like so many other girls, committed the grievous error of falling in love with a common man, rough, uncouth, and far beneath her station. Love in a cottage—about which we hear so much—is all very well in theory, just as is the empty-pocket-light-heart fallacy, but in these modern days the woman habituated to luxury can never be happy in the four-roomed house any more than the man who gallantly marries for love and foregoes his inheritance.No. Each time I recollected that young ruffian’s sneers and threats, his arrogance and his final outburst of murderous passion, which had been so near producing a fatal termination to my well-beloved, my blood boiled. My anger was aflame. The fellow had escaped, but within myself I determined that he should not go scot-free.And yet, when I recollected, it seemed as though Mabel were utterly and irresistibly in that man’s power, even though she had attempted defiance.We remained with Hales and his wife for another hour learning few additional facts except from a word that the old lady let drop. I ascertained that they actually had a son whose name was Herbert, but whose character was none too good.“He was in the stables at Belvoir,” his mother explained when I made inquiry of him. “But he left nearly two years ago, and we haven’t seen him since. He writes sometimes from various places and appears to be prospering.”The fellow was, therefore, as I had surmised from his appearance, a horsekeeper, a groom, or something of that kind.It was already half-past seven when we arrived back at King’s Cross, and after a hasty chop at a small Italian restaurant opposite the station, we both drove to Grosvenor Square, in order to explain to Mabel our success in the solution of the cipher.Carter, who admitted us, knew us so well that he conducted us straight upstairs to the great drawing-room, so artistically lit with its shaded electric lights placed cunningly in all sorts of out-of-the-way corners. Upon the table was a great old punch-bowl, full of splendid Gloire de Dijon roses, which the head gardener sent with the fruit from the house at Mayvill daily. Their arrangement was, I knew, by the hand of the woman whom for years I had secretly admired and loved. Upon a side table was a fine panel photograph of poor Burton Blair in a heavy silver frame, and upon the corner his daughter had placed a tiny bow of crape to honour the dead man’s memory. The great house was full of those womanly touches that betrayed the sweet sympathy of her character and the calm tranquillity of her life.Presently the door opened, and we both rose to our feet, but instead of the bright, sunny-hearted girl with the musical voice and merry, open face, there entered the middle-aged bearded man in gold-rimmed glasses, who was once the bo’sun of the barqueAnnie Curtisof Liverpool, and afterwards had been the secret partner of Burton Blair.“Good-evening, gentlemen,” he exclaimed, bowing with that forced veneer of polish he sometimes assumed. “I am very pleased to welcome you here in my late friend’s house. I have, as you will perceive, taken up my quarters here in accordance with the terms of poor Blair’s will, and I am pleased to have this opportunity of again meeting you.”The fellow’s cool impudence took us both entirely aback. He seemed so entirely confident that his position was unassailable.“We called to see Miss Blair,” I explained. “We were not aware that you were about to take up your residence here quite so quickly.”“Oh, it is best,” he assured us. “There are a great many matters in connexion with Blair’s wide interests that require immediate attention,” and as he was speaking, the door again opened and there entered a dark-haired woman of about twenty-six, of medium height, rather showily dressed in a black, low-cut gown, but whose countenance was of a rather common type, yet, nevertheless, somewhat prepossessing.“My daughter, Dolly,” explained the one-eyed man. “Allow me to introduce you,” and we both gave her rather a cold bow, for it seemed that they had both made their abode there, and taken over the management of the house in their own hands.“I suppose Mrs Percival still remains?” I inquired after a few moments, on recovering from the shock at finding the adventurer and his daughter were actually in possession of that splendid mansion which half London admired and the other half envied—the place of which numerous photographs and descriptions had appeared in the magazines and ladies’ journals.“Yes, Mrs Percival is still in her own sitting-room. I left her there five minutes ago. Mabel, it seems, went out at eleven o’clock this morning and has not returned.”“Not returned,” I exclaimed in quick surprise. “Why not?”“Mrs Percival seems to be very upset. Fears something has happened to her, I think.”Without another word I ran down the broad staircase with its crystal balustrade and, tapping at the door of the room, set apart for Mrs Percival, and announcing my identity, was at once allowed admittance.The instant the prim elderly widow saw me she sprang to her feet in terrible distress, crying—“Oh, Mr Greenwood, Mr Greenwood! What can we do? How can we treat these terrible people? Poor Mabel left this morning and drove in the brougham to Euston Station. There she gave Peters this letter, addressed to you, and then dismissed the carriage. What can it possibly mean?”I took the note she handed me and tremblingly tore it open, to find a few hurriedly scribbled lines in pencil upon a sheet of notepaper, as follows:—“Dear Mr Greenwood,—You will no doubt be greatly surprised to learn that I have left home for ever. I am well aware that you entertain for me as high a regard and esteem as I do for you, but as my secret must come out, I cannot remain to face you of all men. These people will hound me to death, therefore I prefer to live in secret beyond the reach of their taunts and their vengeance than to remain and have the finger of scorn pointed at me. My father’s secret can never become yours, because his enemies are far too wily and ingenious. Every precaution has been taken to secure it against all your endeavours. Therefore, as your friend I tell you it is no use grinding the wind. All is hopeless! Exposure means to me a fate worse than death! Believe me that only desperation has driven me to this step because my poor father’s cowardly enemies and mine have triumphed. Yet at the same time I ask you to forget entirely that any one ever existed of the name of the ill-fated, unhappy and heart-broken Mabel Blair.”I stood with the open, tear-stained letter in my hand absolutely speechless.
The tall old fellow looked at me with his grey eyes and shook his head.
“Burton Blair knew rather too much,” he answered evasively. “He had, it seemed, been raised to chief mate of theAnnie Curtis, when I left her, and Poldo, the man who had held dukes and cardinals and other great men to ransom, worked patiently under him. Then after a bad go of fever Poldo died, and strangely enough gave—so Blair declared—the pack of cards with the secret into his hands. Dicky Dawson, however, who was also on board as bo’sun, and who had lived half his life on Italian brigs in the Adriatic, declares that this story is untrue, and that Blair stole the little bag containing the cards from beneath Poldo’s pillow half an hour before he died. That, however, may be the truth, or a lie, yet the facts remain, that Poldo must have let out some portion of his secret in the delirium of the fever and that the little cards passed into Blair’s possession. Three weeks after the Italian’s death, Blair, on landing at Liverpool, carrying with him the cards and the snap-shot photograph, set out on that very long and fatiguing journey up and down all the roads in England, in order to find me, and learn from me the key to the secret of the outlaws which I held.”
“And when at last he found you, what then?”
“He alleged solemnly that Bruno had given it to him as a dying gift, and that his reason for seeking me was because the old outlaw had, before he died, requested to see the photograph from his sea-chest, and looking upon it for a long time, had said to himself reflectively in Italian, ‘There lives in that house the only man who knows my secret.’ For that reason Blair evidently secured the picture after the Italian’s death. On arrival here he showed me the cards, and promised me a thousand pounds if I would reveal the Italian’s confidences. As the man was dead, I saw no reason to withhold them, and in exchange for a promise to pay the amount I told him what he wanted to know, and among other matters explained the rearrangement of the cards, so that he could decipher them. The key to the cipher I had learnt on that festival when I had discovered Poldo writing upon a pack of cards a message, evidently intended for the Cardinal himself at Rome, for I have since established the fact that the outlaw and the ecclesiastic were in frequent but secret communication prior to the latter’s death.”
“But this man Dawson must have profited enormously by the revelation made by Blair,” I remarked. “They seem to have been most intimate friends.”
“Of course he profited,” Hales replied. “Blair, possessing this remarkable secret, went in deadly fear of Dicky, the bo’sun, who might declare, as he had already done, that he had stolen it from the dying man. He was well aware that Dawson was an unscrupulous sailor of the very worst type, therefore he considered it a very judicious course, I suppose, to go into partnership with him and assist in the exploration of the secret. But poor Blair must have been in the fellow’s hands all through although it is plain that the gains Blair made were enormous, while those of Dicky have been equal, although it seems probable that the latter has lived in absolute obscurity.”
“Dawson feared to come to England,” Reggie remarked.
“Yes,” answered the old man. “There was a rather ugly incident in Liverpool a few years ago—that’s the reason.”
“There is no negative evidence regarding the actual gift of the pack of cards to Blair by this reformed outlaw, is there!” I inquired.
“None whatever. For my own part I believe that Poldo gave them to Blair together with instruction to return ashore and find me, because he had showed him many little kindnesses during repeated illnesses. Poldo, on giving up his evil ways, had become religious and used to attend sailors’ Bethels and missions when ashore, while Blair was, as you know, a very God-fearing man for a sailor. When I recollect all the circumstances, I believe it was only natural that Poldo should give the dead Cardinal’s secret into the hands of his best friend.”
“The spot indicated is near Lucca in Tuscany,” I remarked. “You say that this outlaw, Poldo Pensi, had been there and made an investigation. What did he find?”
“He found what the Cardinal had told him he would find. But he never explained to me its nature. All he would tell was that the secret would render its possessor a very wealthy man—which it certainly did in Blair’s case.”
“The connexion of the Church between the late Cardinal Sannini and Fra Antonio, the Monk of Lucca, is strange,” I observed. “Is the monk, I wonder, in possession of the secret? He certainly had some connexion with the affair, as shown by his constant consultations with the man Dawson.”
“No doubt,” remarked Reggie, turning over the little cards idly. “We’ve now got to discover the exact position of both men, and at the same time prevent this fellow Dawson from obtaining too firm a hold on Mabel Blair’s fortune.”
“Leave that to me,” I said confidently. “For the present our line of action is quite clear. We must investigate the spot on the bank of the Serchio and discover what is hidden there.” Then turning to Hales, I added, “In the record it is, I notice, distinctly directed ‘First find the old man who lives at the house by the crossways.’ What does that mean? Why is that direction given?”
“Because I suppose that when the record was written upon these cards I was the only other person having any knowledge of the Cardinal’s secret—the only person, too, possessing the key to the cipher.”
“But you affected ignorance of all this at first,” I said, still viewing the old fellow with some suspicion.
“Because I was not certain of yourbona-fides,” he laughed quite frankly. “You took me by surprise, and I was not inclined to show my hand prematurely.”
“Then you have really told us all you know?” Reggie said.
“Yes, I know no more,” he replied. “As to what is contained at the spot indicated in the record, I am quite ignorant. Remember that Blair has paid me justly, even more than he stipulated, but as you are well aware he was a most reserved man concerning his own affairs, and left me in entire ignorance.”
“You can give us no further information regarding this one-eyed man who seems to have been Blair’s partner in the extraordinary enterprise?”
“None, except that he’s a very undesirable acquaintance. It was Poldo who nicknamed him ‘The Ceco.’”
“And the monk who calls himself Fra Antonio?”
“I know nothing of him—never heard of any such person.”
It was upon the tip of my tongue to inquire whether the old man had a son, and if that son’s name was Herbert, recollecting, as I did, that tragic midnight scene in Mayvill Park. Yet, fortunately perhaps, I was prompted to remain silent, preferring to conceal my knowledge and to await developments of the extraordinary situation.
Still a fierce, mad jealousy was gnawing at my heart. Mabel, the calm, sweet girl I loved so well, and whose future had been entrusted to me, had, like so many other girls, committed the grievous error of falling in love with a common man, rough, uncouth, and far beneath her station. Love in a cottage—about which we hear so much—is all very well in theory, just as is the empty-pocket-light-heart fallacy, but in these modern days the woman habituated to luxury can never be happy in the four-roomed house any more than the man who gallantly marries for love and foregoes his inheritance.
No. Each time I recollected that young ruffian’s sneers and threats, his arrogance and his final outburst of murderous passion, which had been so near producing a fatal termination to my well-beloved, my blood boiled. My anger was aflame. The fellow had escaped, but within myself I determined that he should not go scot-free.
And yet, when I recollected, it seemed as though Mabel were utterly and irresistibly in that man’s power, even though she had attempted defiance.
We remained with Hales and his wife for another hour learning few additional facts except from a word that the old lady let drop. I ascertained that they actually had a son whose name was Herbert, but whose character was none too good.
“He was in the stables at Belvoir,” his mother explained when I made inquiry of him. “But he left nearly two years ago, and we haven’t seen him since. He writes sometimes from various places and appears to be prospering.”
The fellow was, therefore, as I had surmised from his appearance, a horsekeeper, a groom, or something of that kind.
It was already half-past seven when we arrived back at King’s Cross, and after a hasty chop at a small Italian restaurant opposite the station, we both drove to Grosvenor Square, in order to explain to Mabel our success in the solution of the cipher.
Carter, who admitted us, knew us so well that he conducted us straight upstairs to the great drawing-room, so artistically lit with its shaded electric lights placed cunningly in all sorts of out-of-the-way corners. Upon the table was a great old punch-bowl, full of splendid Gloire de Dijon roses, which the head gardener sent with the fruit from the house at Mayvill daily. Their arrangement was, I knew, by the hand of the woman whom for years I had secretly admired and loved. Upon a side table was a fine panel photograph of poor Burton Blair in a heavy silver frame, and upon the corner his daughter had placed a tiny bow of crape to honour the dead man’s memory. The great house was full of those womanly touches that betrayed the sweet sympathy of her character and the calm tranquillity of her life.
Presently the door opened, and we both rose to our feet, but instead of the bright, sunny-hearted girl with the musical voice and merry, open face, there entered the middle-aged bearded man in gold-rimmed glasses, who was once the bo’sun of the barqueAnnie Curtisof Liverpool, and afterwards had been the secret partner of Burton Blair.
“Good-evening, gentlemen,” he exclaimed, bowing with that forced veneer of polish he sometimes assumed. “I am very pleased to welcome you here in my late friend’s house. I have, as you will perceive, taken up my quarters here in accordance with the terms of poor Blair’s will, and I am pleased to have this opportunity of again meeting you.”
The fellow’s cool impudence took us both entirely aback. He seemed so entirely confident that his position was unassailable.
“We called to see Miss Blair,” I explained. “We were not aware that you were about to take up your residence here quite so quickly.”
“Oh, it is best,” he assured us. “There are a great many matters in connexion with Blair’s wide interests that require immediate attention,” and as he was speaking, the door again opened and there entered a dark-haired woman of about twenty-six, of medium height, rather showily dressed in a black, low-cut gown, but whose countenance was of a rather common type, yet, nevertheless, somewhat prepossessing.
“My daughter, Dolly,” explained the one-eyed man. “Allow me to introduce you,” and we both gave her rather a cold bow, for it seemed that they had both made their abode there, and taken over the management of the house in their own hands.
“I suppose Mrs Percival still remains?” I inquired after a few moments, on recovering from the shock at finding the adventurer and his daughter were actually in possession of that splendid mansion which half London admired and the other half envied—the place of which numerous photographs and descriptions had appeared in the magazines and ladies’ journals.
“Yes, Mrs Percival is still in her own sitting-room. I left her there five minutes ago. Mabel, it seems, went out at eleven o’clock this morning and has not returned.”
“Not returned,” I exclaimed in quick surprise. “Why not?”
“Mrs Percival seems to be very upset. Fears something has happened to her, I think.”
Without another word I ran down the broad staircase with its crystal balustrade and, tapping at the door of the room, set apart for Mrs Percival, and announcing my identity, was at once allowed admittance.
The instant the prim elderly widow saw me she sprang to her feet in terrible distress, crying—
“Oh, Mr Greenwood, Mr Greenwood! What can we do? How can we treat these terrible people? Poor Mabel left this morning and drove in the brougham to Euston Station. There she gave Peters this letter, addressed to you, and then dismissed the carriage. What can it possibly mean?”
I took the note she handed me and tremblingly tore it open, to find a few hurriedly scribbled lines in pencil upon a sheet of notepaper, as follows:—
“Dear Mr Greenwood,—You will no doubt be greatly surprised to learn that I have left home for ever. I am well aware that you entertain for me as high a regard and esteem as I do for you, but as my secret must come out, I cannot remain to face you of all men. These people will hound me to death, therefore I prefer to live in secret beyond the reach of their taunts and their vengeance than to remain and have the finger of scorn pointed at me. My father’s secret can never become yours, because his enemies are far too wily and ingenious. Every precaution has been taken to secure it against all your endeavours. Therefore, as your friend I tell you it is no use grinding the wind. All is hopeless! Exposure means to me a fate worse than death! Believe me that only desperation has driven me to this step because my poor father’s cowardly enemies and mine have triumphed. Yet at the same time I ask you to forget entirely that any one ever existed of the name of the ill-fated, unhappy and heart-broken Mabel Blair.”
I stood with the open, tear-stained letter in my hand absolutely speechless.
Chapter Twenty Two.The Mystery of a Night’s Adventure.“Exposure means to me a fate worse than death,” she wrote. What could it mean?Mrs Percival divined by my face the gravity of the communication, and, rising quickly to her feet, she placed her hand tenderly upon my shoulder, asking—“What is it, Mr Greenwood? May I not know?”For answer I handed her the note. She read it through quickly, then gave vent to a loud cry of dismay, realising that Burton Blair’s daughter had actually fled. That she held the man Dawson in fear was plain. She dreaded that her own secret, whatever it was, must now be exposed, and had, it seemed, fled rather than again face me. But why? What could her secret possibly be that she was so ashamed that she was bent upon hiding herself?Mrs Percival summoned the coachman, Crump, who had driven his young mistress to Euston, and questioned him.“Miss Mabel ordered thecoupéjust before eleven, ma’am,” the man said, saluting. “She took her crocodile dressing-bag with her, but last night she sent away a big trunk by Carter Patterson—full of old clothing, so she told her maid. I drove her to Euston Station where she alighted and went into the booking-hall. She kept me waiting about five minutes, when she brought a porter who took her bag, and she then gave me the letter addressed to Mr Greenwood to give to you. I drove home then, ma’am.”“She went to the North, evidently,” I remarked when Crump had left and the door had closed behind him. “It looks as though her flight was premeditated. She sent away her things last night.”I was thinking of that arrogant young stable worker, Hales, and wondering if his renewed threats had really caused her to keep another tryst with him. If so, it was exceedingly dangerous.“We must find her,” said Mrs Percival, resolutely. “Ah!” she sighed, “I really don’t know what will happen, for the house is now in possession of this odious man Dawson and his daughter, and the man is a most uncouth, ill-bred fellow. He addresses the servants with an easy familiarity, just as though they were his equals; and just now, he actually complimented one of the housemaids upon her good looks! Terrible, Mr Greenwood, terrible,” exclaimed the widow, greatly shocked. “Most disgraceful show of ill-breeding! I certainly cannot remain here now Mabel has thought fit to leave, without even consulting me. Lady Rainham called this afternoon, but of course I had to be not at home. What can I tell people in these distressing circumstances?”I saw how scandalised was the estimable old chaperone, for she was nothing if not a straightforward widow, whose very life depended upon rigorous etiquette and the traditions of her honourable family. Cordial and affable to her equals, yet she was most frigid and unbending to all inferiors, cultivating a habit of staring at them through her square eyeglass rimmed with gold, and surveying them as though they were surprising creatures of a different flesh and blood. It was this latter idiosyncrasy which always annoyed Mabel, who held the very womanly creed that one should be kind and pleasant to inferiors and cold only to enemies. Nevertheless, under Mrs Percival’s protective wing and active tuition, Mabel herself had gone into the best circle of society whose doors are ever open to the daughter of the millionaire, and had established a reputation as one of the most charmingdébutantesof her season.How society has altered in these past ten years! Nowadays, the golden key is the open sesame of the doors of the bluest blood in England.The old exclusive circles are no longer, or if there are any, they are obscure and dowdy. Ladies go to music halls and glorified night-clubs. What used to be regarded as the drawback from the dinner at a restaurant is now a principal attraction. A gentlewoman a generation ago reasonably objected that she did not know whom she might sit next. Now, as was the case at the theatre in the pre-Garrick days, the loose character of a portion of the visitors constitutes in itself a lure. The more flagrant the scandal concerning some bedizened “impropriety” the greater the inducement to dine in her company, and, if possible, in her vicinity. Of such is the tone and trend of London society to-day!For a quarter of an hour, while Reggie was engaged with Dawsonpère et fille, I took counsel with the widow, endeavouring to form some idea of where Mabel had concealed herself. Mrs Percival’s idea was that she would reveal her whereabouts ere long, but, knowing her firmness of character as well as I did, I held a different opinion. Her letter was one of a woman who had made a resolve and meant at all hazards to keep it. She feared to meet me, and for that reason would, no doubt, conceal her identity. She had a separate account at Coutts’ in her own name, therefore she would not be compelled to reveal her whereabouts through want of funds.Ford, the dead man’s secretary, a tall, clean-shaven, athletic man of thirty, put his head into the room, but, finding us talking, at once withdrew. Mrs Percival had already questioned him, she said, but he was entirely unaware of Mabel’s destination.The man Dawson had now usurped Ford’s position in the household, and the latter, full of resentment, was on the constant watch and as full of suspicion as we all were.Reggie rejoined me presently, saying, “That fellow is absolutely a bounder of the very first water. Actually invited me to have a whisky-and-soda—in Blair’s house, too! He’s treating Mabel’s flight as a huge joke, saying that she’ll be back quickly enough, and adding that she can’t afford to be away long, and that he’ll bring her back the very instant he desires her presence here. In fact, the fellow talks just as though she were as wax in his hands, and as if he can do anything he pleases with her.”“He can ruin her financially, that’s certain,” I remarked, sighing. “But read this, old chap,” and I gave him her strangely-worded letter.“Good Heavens!” he gasped, when he glanced at it, “she’s in deadly terror of those people, that’s very certain. It’s to avoid them and you that she’s escaped—to Liverpool and America, perhaps. Remember she’s been a great traveller all her youth and therefore knows her way about.”“We must find her, Reggie,” I declared decisively.“But the worst of it is that she’s bent on avoiding you,” he said. “She has some distinct reason for this, it seems.”“A reason known only to herself,” I remarked pensively. “It is surely acontretempsthat now, just at the moment when we have gained the truth of the Cardinal’s secret which brought Blair his fortune, Mabel should voluntarily disappear in this manner. Recollect all we have at stake. We know not who are our friends or who our enemies. We ought both to go out to Italy and discover the spot indicated in that cipher record, or others will probably forestall us, and we may then be too late.”He agreed that the record being bequeathed to me, I ought to take immediate steps to establish my claim to it, whatever might be. We could not disguise from ourselves the fact that Dawson, as Blair’s partner and participator of his enormous wealth, must be well aware of the secret, and that he had already, most probably, taken steps to conceal the truth from myself, the rightful owner. He was a power to be reckoned with—a sinister person, possessed of the wiliest cunning and the most devilish ingenuity in the art of subterfuge. Report everywhere gave him that character. He possessed the cold, calm manner of the man who had lived by his wits, and it seemed that in this affair his ingenuity, sharpened by a life of adventure, was to be pitted against my own.Mabel’s sudden resolution and disappearance were maddening. The mystery of her letter, too, was inscrutable. If she were really dreading lest some undesirable fact might be exposed, then she ought to have trusted me sufficiently to take me entirely into her confidence. I loved her, although I had never declared my passion, therefore, ignorant of the truth, she had treated me as I had desired, as a sincere friend. Yet, why had she not sought my aid? Women are such strange creatures, I reflected. Perhaps she loved that fellow after all!A fevered, anxious week went by and Mabel made no sign. One night I left Reggie at the Devonshire about half-past eleven and walked the damp, foggy London streets until the roar of traffic died away, the cabs crawled and grew infrequent and the damp, muddy pavements were given over to the tramping constable and the shivering outcast. In the thick mist I wandered onward thinking deeply, yet more and more mystified at the remarkable chain of circumstances which seemed hour by hour to become more entangled.On and on I had wandered, heedless of where my footsteps carried me, passing along Knightsbridge, skirting the Park and Kensington Gardens, and was just passing the corner of the Earl’s Court Road when some fortunate circumstance awakened me from my deep reverie, and I became conscious for the first time that I was being followed. Yes, there distinctly was a footstep behind me, hurrying when I hurried, slackening when I slackened. I crossed the road, and, before the long high wall of Holland Park I halted and turned. My pursuer came on a few paces, but drew up suddenly, and I could only distinguish against the glimmer of the street lamp through the London fog a figure long and distorted by the bewildering mist. The latter was not sufficiently dense to prevent me finding my way, for I knew that part of London well. Nevertheless, to be followed so persistently at such an hour was not very pleasant. I was suspicious that some tramp or thief who had passed me by and found me oblivious to my surroundings had turned and followed me with evil intent.Forward I went again, but as soon as I had done so the light, even tread, almost an echo of my own, came on steadily behind me. I had heard weird stories of madmen who haunt the London streets at night and who follow unsuspecting foot-passengers aimlessly. It is one of the forms of insanity well known to specialists.Again I recrossed the road, passing through Edwarde’s Square and out into Earl’s Court Road, thus retracing my steps back towards the High Street, but the mysterious man still followed me so persistently that in the mist, which in that part had grown thicker until it obscured the street lamps, I confess I experienced some uneasiness.Presently, however, just as I was turning the corner into Lexham Gardens at a point where the fog had obscured everything, I felt a sudden rush, and at the same instant experienced a sharp stinging sensation behind the right shoulder. The shock was such a severe one that I cried out, turning next instant upon my assailant, but so agile was he that, ere I could face him, he had eluded me and escaped.I heard his receding footsteps—for he was running away down the Earl’s Court Road—and shouted for the police. But there was no response. The pain in my shoulder became excruciating. The unknown man had struck me with a knife, and blood was flowing, for I felt it damp and sticky upon my hand.Again I shouted “Police! Police!” until at last I heard an answering voice in the mist and walked in its direction. After several further shouts I discovered the constable and to him related my strange experience.He held his bull’s eye close to my back and said—“Yes, there’s no doubt, sir, you’ve been stabbed! What kind of a man was he?”“I never saw him,” was my lame reply. “He always kept at a distance from me and only approached at a point where it was too dark to distinguish his features.”“I’ve seen no one, except a clergyman whom I met a moment ago passing in Earl’s Court Road—at least he wore a broad-brimmed hat like a clergyman. I didn’t see his face.”“A clergyman!” I gasped. “Do you think it could have been a Roman Catholic priest?” for my thoughts were at that moment of Fra Antonio, who was evidently the guardian of the Cardinal’s secret.“Ah! I’m sure I couldn’t tell. I couldn’t see his features. I only noted his hat.”“I feel very faint,” I said, as a sickening dizziness crept over me. “I wish you’d get me a cab. I think I had better go straight home to Great Russell Street.”“That’s a long way. Hadn’t you better go round to the West London Hospital first?” the policeman suggested.“No,” I decided. “I’ll go home and call my own doctor.”Then I sat upon a doorstep at the end of Lexham Gardens and waited while the constable went in search of a hansom in the Old Brompton Road.Had I been attacked by some homicidal maniac who had followed me all that distance, or had I narrowly escaped being the victim of foul assassination? To me the latter theory seemed decidedly the most feasible. There was a strong motive for my death. Blair had bequeathed the great secret to me and I had now learnt the cipher of the cards.This fact had probably become known to our enemies, and hence their dastardly attempt.Such a contingency, however, was a startling one, for if it had become known that I had really deciphered the record, then our enemies would most certainly take steps in Italy to prevent us discovering the secret of that spot on the banks of the wild and winding Serchio.At last the cab came, and, slipping a tip into the constable’s palm, I got in, and with my silk muffler placed at my back to staunch the blood, drove slowly on through the fog at little more than foot’s-pace.Almost as soon as I entered the hansom I felt my head swimming and a strange sensation of numbness creeping up my legs. A curious nausea seized me, too, and although I had fortunately been able to stop the flow of blood, which tended to prove that the wound was not such a serious one after all, my hands felt strangely cramped, and in my jaws was a curious pain very much like the commencement of an attack of neuralgia.I felt terribly ill. The cabman, informed by the constable of my injury, opened the trap-door in the roof to inquire after me, but I could scarcely articulate a reply. If the wound was only a superficial one it certainly had a strange effect upon me.Of the many misty lights at Hyde Park Corner I have a distinct recollection, but after that my senses seemed bewildered by the fog and the pain I suffered and I recollect nothing more until, when I opened my eyes painfully again, I found myself in my own bed, the daylight shining in at the window and Reggie and our old friend Tom Walker, surgeon, of Queen Anne Street, standing beside me watching me with a serious gravity that struck me at the moment as rather humorous.Nevertheless, I must admit that there was very little humour in the situation.
“Exposure means to me a fate worse than death,” she wrote. What could it mean?
Mrs Percival divined by my face the gravity of the communication, and, rising quickly to her feet, she placed her hand tenderly upon my shoulder, asking—
“What is it, Mr Greenwood? May I not know?”
For answer I handed her the note. She read it through quickly, then gave vent to a loud cry of dismay, realising that Burton Blair’s daughter had actually fled. That she held the man Dawson in fear was plain. She dreaded that her own secret, whatever it was, must now be exposed, and had, it seemed, fled rather than again face me. But why? What could her secret possibly be that she was so ashamed that she was bent upon hiding herself?
Mrs Percival summoned the coachman, Crump, who had driven his young mistress to Euston, and questioned him.
“Miss Mabel ordered thecoupéjust before eleven, ma’am,” the man said, saluting. “She took her crocodile dressing-bag with her, but last night she sent away a big trunk by Carter Patterson—full of old clothing, so she told her maid. I drove her to Euston Station where she alighted and went into the booking-hall. She kept me waiting about five minutes, when she brought a porter who took her bag, and she then gave me the letter addressed to Mr Greenwood to give to you. I drove home then, ma’am.”
“She went to the North, evidently,” I remarked when Crump had left and the door had closed behind him. “It looks as though her flight was premeditated. She sent away her things last night.”
I was thinking of that arrogant young stable worker, Hales, and wondering if his renewed threats had really caused her to keep another tryst with him. If so, it was exceedingly dangerous.
“We must find her,” said Mrs Percival, resolutely. “Ah!” she sighed, “I really don’t know what will happen, for the house is now in possession of this odious man Dawson and his daughter, and the man is a most uncouth, ill-bred fellow. He addresses the servants with an easy familiarity, just as though they were his equals; and just now, he actually complimented one of the housemaids upon her good looks! Terrible, Mr Greenwood, terrible,” exclaimed the widow, greatly shocked. “Most disgraceful show of ill-breeding! I certainly cannot remain here now Mabel has thought fit to leave, without even consulting me. Lady Rainham called this afternoon, but of course I had to be not at home. What can I tell people in these distressing circumstances?”
I saw how scandalised was the estimable old chaperone, for she was nothing if not a straightforward widow, whose very life depended upon rigorous etiquette and the traditions of her honourable family. Cordial and affable to her equals, yet she was most frigid and unbending to all inferiors, cultivating a habit of staring at them through her square eyeglass rimmed with gold, and surveying them as though they were surprising creatures of a different flesh and blood. It was this latter idiosyncrasy which always annoyed Mabel, who held the very womanly creed that one should be kind and pleasant to inferiors and cold only to enemies. Nevertheless, under Mrs Percival’s protective wing and active tuition, Mabel herself had gone into the best circle of society whose doors are ever open to the daughter of the millionaire, and had established a reputation as one of the most charmingdébutantesof her season.
How society has altered in these past ten years! Nowadays, the golden key is the open sesame of the doors of the bluest blood in England.
The old exclusive circles are no longer, or if there are any, they are obscure and dowdy. Ladies go to music halls and glorified night-clubs. What used to be regarded as the drawback from the dinner at a restaurant is now a principal attraction. A gentlewoman a generation ago reasonably objected that she did not know whom she might sit next. Now, as was the case at the theatre in the pre-Garrick days, the loose character of a portion of the visitors constitutes in itself a lure. The more flagrant the scandal concerning some bedizened “impropriety” the greater the inducement to dine in her company, and, if possible, in her vicinity. Of such is the tone and trend of London society to-day!
For a quarter of an hour, while Reggie was engaged with Dawsonpère et fille, I took counsel with the widow, endeavouring to form some idea of where Mabel had concealed herself. Mrs Percival’s idea was that she would reveal her whereabouts ere long, but, knowing her firmness of character as well as I did, I held a different opinion. Her letter was one of a woman who had made a resolve and meant at all hazards to keep it. She feared to meet me, and for that reason would, no doubt, conceal her identity. She had a separate account at Coutts’ in her own name, therefore she would not be compelled to reveal her whereabouts through want of funds.
Ford, the dead man’s secretary, a tall, clean-shaven, athletic man of thirty, put his head into the room, but, finding us talking, at once withdrew. Mrs Percival had already questioned him, she said, but he was entirely unaware of Mabel’s destination.
The man Dawson had now usurped Ford’s position in the household, and the latter, full of resentment, was on the constant watch and as full of suspicion as we all were.
Reggie rejoined me presently, saying, “That fellow is absolutely a bounder of the very first water. Actually invited me to have a whisky-and-soda—in Blair’s house, too! He’s treating Mabel’s flight as a huge joke, saying that she’ll be back quickly enough, and adding that she can’t afford to be away long, and that he’ll bring her back the very instant he desires her presence here. In fact, the fellow talks just as though she were as wax in his hands, and as if he can do anything he pleases with her.”
“He can ruin her financially, that’s certain,” I remarked, sighing. “But read this, old chap,” and I gave him her strangely-worded letter.
“Good Heavens!” he gasped, when he glanced at it, “she’s in deadly terror of those people, that’s very certain. It’s to avoid them and you that she’s escaped—to Liverpool and America, perhaps. Remember she’s been a great traveller all her youth and therefore knows her way about.”
“We must find her, Reggie,” I declared decisively.
“But the worst of it is that she’s bent on avoiding you,” he said. “She has some distinct reason for this, it seems.”
“A reason known only to herself,” I remarked pensively. “It is surely acontretempsthat now, just at the moment when we have gained the truth of the Cardinal’s secret which brought Blair his fortune, Mabel should voluntarily disappear in this manner. Recollect all we have at stake. We know not who are our friends or who our enemies. We ought both to go out to Italy and discover the spot indicated in that cipher record, or others will probably forestall us, and we may then be too late.”
He agreed that the record being bequeathed to me, I ought to take immediate steps to establish my claim to it, whatever might be. We could not disguise from ourselves the fact that Dawson, as Blair’s partner and participator of his enormous wealth, must be well aware of the secret, and that he had already, most probably, taken steps to conceal the truth from myself, the rightful owner. He was a power to be reckoned with—a sinister person, possessed of the wiliest cunning and the most devilish ingenuity in the art of subterfuge. Report everywhere gave him that character. He possessed the cold, calm manner of the man who had lived by his wits, and it seemed that in this affair his ingenuity, sharpened by a life of adventure, was to be pitted against my own.
Mabel’s sudden resolution and disappearance were maddening. The mystery of her letter, too, was inscrutable. If she were really dreading lest some undesirable fact might be exposed, then she ought to have trusted me sufficiently to take me entirely into her confidence. I loved her, although I had never declared my passion, therefore, ignorant of the truth, she had treated me as I had desired, as a sincere friend. Yet, why had she not sought my aid? Women are such strange creatures, I reflected. Perhaps she loved that fellow after all!
A fevered, anxious week went by and Mabel made no sign. One night I left Reggie at the Devonshire about half-past eleven and walked the damp, foggy London streets until the roar of traffic died away, the cabs crawled and grew infrequent and the damp, muddy pavements were given over to the tramping constable and the shivering outcast. In the thick mist I wandered onward thinking deeply, yet more and more mystified at the remarkable chain of circumstances which seemed hour by hour to become more entangled.
On and on I had wandered, heedless of where my footsteps carried me, passing along Knightsbridge, skirting the Park and Kensington Gardens, and was just passing the corner of the Earl’s Court Road when some fortunate circumstance awakened me from my deep reverie, and I became conscious for the first time that I was being followed. Yes, there distinctly was a footstep behind me, hurrying when I hurried, slackening when I slackened. I crossed the road, and, before the long high wall of Holland Park I halted and turned. My pursuer came on a few paces, but drew up suddenly, and I could only distinguish against the glimmer of the street lamp through the London fog a figure long and distorted by the bewildering mist. The latter was not sufficiently dense to prevent me finding my way, for I knew that part of London well. Nevertheless, to be followed so persistently at such an hour was not very pleasant. I was suspicious that some tramp or thief who had passed me by and found me oblivious to my surroundings had turned and followed me with evil intent.
Forward I went again, but as soon as I had done so the light, even tread, almost an echo of my own, came on steadily behind me. I had heard weird stories of madmen who haunt the London streets at night and who follow unsuspecting foot-passengers aimlessly. It is one of the forms of insanity well known to specialists.
Again I recrossed the road, passing through Edwarde’s Square and out into Earl’s Court Road, thus retracing my steps back towards the High Street, but the mysterious man still followed me so persistently that in the mist, which in that part had grown thicker until it obscured the street lamps, I confess I experienced some uneasiness.
Presently, however, just as I was turning the corner into Lexham Gardens at a point where the fog had obscured everything, I felt a sudden rush, and at the same instant experienced a sharp stinging sensation behind the right shoulder. The shock was such a severe one that I cried out, turning next instant upon my assailant, but so agile was he that, ere I could face him, he had eluded me and escaped.
I heard his receding footsteps—for he was running away down the Earl’s Court Road—and shouted for the police. But there was no response. The pain in my shoulder became excruciating. The unknown man had struck me with a knife, and blood was flowing, for I felt it damp and sticky upon my hand.
Again I shouted “Police! Police!” until at last I heard an answering voice in the mist and walked in its direction. After several further shouts I discovered the constable and to him related my strange experience.
He held his bull’s eye close to my back and said—
“Yes, there’s no doubt, sir, you’ve been stabbed! What kind of a man was he?”
“I never saw him,” was my lame reply. “He always kept at a distance from me and only approached at a point where it was too dark to distinguish his features.”
“I’ve seen no one, except a clergyman whom I met a moment ago passing in Earl’s Court Road—at least he wore a broad-brimmed hat like a clergyman. I didn’t see his face.”
“A clergyman!” I gasped. “Do you think it could have been a Roman Catholic priest?” for my thoughts were at that moment of Fra Antonio, who was evidently the guardian of the Cardinal’s secret.
“Ah! I’m sure I couldn’t tell. I couldn’t see his features. I only noted his hat.”
“I feel very faint,” I said, as a sickening dizziness crept over me. “I wish you’d get me a cab. I think I had better go straight home to Great Russell Street.”
“That’s a long way. Hadn’t you better go round to the West London Hospital first?” the policeman suggested.
“No,” I decided. “I’ll go home and call my own doctor.”
Then I sat upon a doorstep at the end of Lexham Gardens and waited while the constable went in search of a hansom in the Old Brompton Road.
Had I been attacked by some homicidal maniac who had followed me all that distance, or had I narrowly escaped being the victim of foul assassination? To me the latter theory seemed decidedly the most feasible. There was a strong motive for my death. Blair had bequeathed the great secret to me and I had now learnt the cipher of the cards.
This fact had probably become known to our enemies, and hence their dastardly attempt.
Such a contingency, however, was a startling one, for if it had become known that I had really deciphered the record, then our enemies would most certainly take steps in Italy to prevent us discovering the secret of that spot on the banks of the wild and winding Serchio.
At last the cab came, and, slipping a tip into the constable’s palm, I got in, and with my silk muffler placed at my back to staunch the blood, drove slowly on through the fog at little more than foot’s-pace.
Almost as soon as I entered the hansom I felt my head swimming and a strange sensation of numbness creeping up my legs. A curious nausea seized me, too, and although I had fortunately been able to stop the flow of blood, which tended to prove that the wound was not such a serious one after all, my hands felt strangely cramped, and in my jaws was a curious pain very much like the commencement of an attack of neuralgia.
I felt terribly ill. The cabman, informed by the constable of my injury, opened the trap-door in the roof to inquire after me, but I could scarcely articulate a reply. If the wound was only a superficial one it certainly had a strange effect upon me.
Of the many misty lights at Hyde Park Corner I have a distinct recollection, but after that my senses seemed bewildered by the fog and the pain I suffered and I recollect nothing more until, when I opened my eyes painfully again, I found myself in my own bed, the daylight shining in at the window and Reggie and our old friend Tom Walker, surgeon, of Queen Anne Street, standing beside me watching me with a serious gravity that struck me at the moment as rather humorous.
Nevertheless, I must admit that there was very little humour in the situation.
Chapter Twenty Three.Which is in Many Ways Amazing.Walker was puzzled, distinctly puzzled. He had, I found, strapped up my wound during my unconsciousness after probing it and injecting various antiseptics, I suppose. He had also called in consultation Sir Charles Hoare, the very distinguished surgeon of Charing Cross Hospital, and both of them had been greatly puzzled over my symptoms.When, an hour later, I was sufficiently recovered to be able to talk, Walker held my wrist and asked me how it all happened.After I had explained as well as I could, he said—“Well, my dear fellow, I can only say you’ve been about as near to death as any man I’ve ever attended. It was just a case of touch and go with you. When Seton first called me and I saw you I feared that it was all up. Your wound is quite a small one, superficial really, and yet your collapsed condition has been most extraordinary, and there are certain symptoms so mysterious that they have puzzled both Sir Charles and myself.”“What did the fellow use?”“Not an ordinary knife, certainly. It was evidently a long, thin-bladed dagger—a stiletto, most probably. I found outside the wound upon the cloth of your overcoat some grease, like animal fat. I am having a portion of it analysed and do you know what I expect to find in it?”“No; what?”“Poison,” was his reply. “Sir Charles agrees with me in the theory that you were struck with one of those small, antique poignards with perforated blades, used so frequently in Italy in the fifteenth century.”“In Italy!” I cried, the very name of that country arousing within me suspicion of an attempt upon me by Dawson or by his close friend, the Monk of Lucca.“Yes; Sir Charles, who, as you probably know, possesses a large collection of ancient arms, tells me that in mediaeval Florence they used to impregnate animal fat with some very potent poison and then rub it upon the perforated blade. On striking a victim the act of withdrawing the blade from the wound left a portion of the envenomed grease within, which, of course, produced a fatal effect.”“But you surely don’t anticipate that I’m poisoned?” I gasped.“Certainly you are poisoned. Your wound would neither account for your long insensibility nor for the strange, livid marks upon your body. Look at the backs of your hands!”I looked as he directed and was horrified to find upon each small, dark, copper-coloured marks, which also covered my wrists and arms.“Don’t be too alarmed, Greenwood,” the good-humoured doctor laughed, “you’ve turned the corner, and you’re not going to die yet. You’ve had a narrow squeak of it, and certainly the weapon with which you were struck was as deadly as any that could be devised, but, fortunately, you had a thick overcoat on, besides other heavy clothing, vests and things, all of which removed the greater part of the venomous substance before it could enter the flesh. And a lucky thing it was for you, I can tell you. Had you been attacked like this in summer, you’d have stood no chance.”“But who did it?” I exclaimed, bewildered, my eyes riveted upon those ugly marks upon my skin, the evidence that some deadly poison was at work within my system.“Somebody who owed you a very first-class grudge, I should fancy,” laughed the surgeon, who had been my friend for many years and who used sometimes to come out hunting with the Fitzwilliams. “But cheer up, old chap, you’ll have to live on milk and beef-tea for a day or two, have your wound dressed and keep very quiet, and you’ll soon be bobbing about again.”“That’s all very well,” I replied, impatiently, “but I’ve got a host of things to do, some private matters to attend to.”“Then you’ll have to let them slide for a day or two, that’s very certain.”“Yes,” urged Reggie, “you must really keep quiet, Gilbert. I’m only thankful that it isn’t so serious as we at first expected. When the cabman brought you home and Glave tore out for Walker, I really thought you’d die before he arrived. I couldn’t feel any palpitation of your heart, and you were cold as ice.”“I wonder who was the brute who struck me!” I cried. “Great Jacob! if I’d have caught the fellow, I’d have wrung his precious neck there and then.”“What’s the use of worrying, so long as you get better quickly?” Reggie asked philosophically.But I was silent, reflecting that in the belief of Sir Charles Hoare an old Florentine poison dagger had been used. The very fact caused me to suspect that the dastardly attack had been made upon me by my enemies.We, of course, told Walker nothing of our curious quest, for the present regarding the affair as strictly confidential. Therefore he treated my injury lightly, declaring that I should quickly recover by the exercise of a little patience.After he had left, shortly before midday, Reggie sat at my bedside and gravely discussed the situation. The two most pressing points at that moment were first to discover the whereabouts of my well-beloved, and secondly to go out to Italy and investigate the Cardinal’s secret.The days passed, long, weary, gloomy days of early spring, during which I tossed in bed impatient and helpless. I longed to be up and active, but Walker forbade it. He brought me books and papers instead, and enjoined quiet and perfect rest. Although Reggie and I still had our little hunting box down at Helpstone we had not, since Blair’s death, been down there. Besides, the season in the lace trade was an unusually busy one, and Reggie now seemed tied to his counting-house more than ever.So I was left alone the greater part of the day with Glave to attend to my wants, and with one or two male friends who now and then looked in to smoke and chat.Thus passed the month of March, my progress being much slower than Walker had at first anticipated. On analysis a very dangerous irritant poison had been discovered mixed with the grease, and it appeared that I had absorbed more of it into my system than was at first believed—hence my tardy recovery.Mrs Percival, who at our urgent request still remained at Grosvenor Square, visited me sometimes, bringing me fruit and flowers from the hothouses at Mayvill, but she had nothing to report concerning Mabel. The latter had disappeared as completely as though the earth had opened and swallowed her. She was anxious to leave Blair’s house now that it was occupied by the usurpers, but we had cajoled her into remaining in order to keep some check upon the movements of the man Dawson and his daughter. Ford had been so exasperated at the man’s manner that, on the fifth day of the newrégime, he had remonstrated, whereupon Dawson had calmly placed a year’s wages in banknotes in an envelope, and at once dispensed with his further services, as, of course, he had intended to do all along.The confidential secretary was, however, assisting us, and at that moment was making every inquiry possible to ascertain the whereabouts of his young mistress.“The house is absolutely topsy-turvy,” declared Mrs Percival one day, as she sat with me. “The servants are in revolt, and poor Noble, the housekeeper, is having a most terrible time. Carter and eight of the other servants gave notice yesterday. This person Dawson represents the very acme of bad manners and bad breeding, yet I overheard him remarking to his daughter two days ago that he actually contemplated putting up for the Reform and entering Parliament! Ah! what would poor Mabel say, if she knew? The girl, Dolly, as he calls her, the common little wench, has established herself in Mabel’s boudoir, and is about to have it re-decorated in daffodil yellow, to suit her complexion, I believe, while as for finances, it seems, from what Mr Leighton says, that poor Mr Blair’s fortune must go entirely through the fellow’s hands.”“It’s a shame—an abominable shame!” I cried angrily. “We know that the man is an adventurer, and yet we are utterly powerless,” I added bitterly.“Poor Mabel!” sighed the widow, who was really much devoted to her. “Do you know, Mr Greenwood,” she said, with a sudden air of confidence, “I have thought more than once since her father’s death that she is in possession of the truth of the strange connexion between her father and this unscrupulous man who has been given such power over her and hers. Indeed, she has confessed to me as much. And I believe that, if she would but tell us the truth, we might be able to get rid of this terrible incubus. Why doesn’t she do it—to save herself?”“Because she is now in fear of him,” I answered in a hard, despairing voice. “She holds some secret of which she lives in terror. That, I believe, accounts for the sudden manner in which she has left her own roof and disappeared. She has left the fellow in undisputed possession of everything.”I had not forgotten Dawson’s arrogance and self-confidence on the night he had first called upon us.“But now, Mr Greenwood, will you please excuse me for what I am going to say?” asked Mrs Percival, settling her skirts after a brief pause and looking straight into my face. “Perhaps I have no right to enter into your more private matters in this manner, but I trust you will forgive me when you reflect that I am only speaking on the poor girl’s behalf.”“Well!” I inquired, somewhat surprised at her sudden change of manner. Usually she was haughty and frigid in the extreme, a scathing critic who had the names of everybody’s cousins aunts and nephews at her fingers’ ends.“The fact is this,” she went on. “You might, I feel confident, induce her to tell us the truth. You are the only person who possesses any influence with her now that her father is dead, and—permit me to say so—I have reason for knowing that she entertains a very strong regard for you.”“Yes,” I remarked, unable to restrain a sigh, “we are friends—good friends.”“More,” declared Mrs Percival, “Mabel loves you.”“Loves me!” I cried, starting up and supporting myself upon one elbow. “No, I think you must be mistaken. She regards me more as a brother than a lover, and she has, I think, learnt ever since the first day we met in such romantic conditions, to regard me in the light of a protector.“No,” I added, shaking my head, “there are certain barriers that must prevent her loving me—the difference of our ages, of position and all that.”“Ah! There you are entirely mistaken,” said the widow, quite frankly. “I happen to know that the very reason why her father left his secret to you was in order that you might profit by its knowledge as he had done, and because he foresaw the direction of Mabel’s affections.”“How do you know this, Mrs Percival?” I demanded, half inclined to doubt her.“Because Mr Blair, before making his will, took me into his confidence and asked me frankly whether his daughter had ever mentioned you in such a manner as to cause me to suspect. I told him the truth of course, just as I have now told you. Mabel loves you—loves you very dearly.”“Then for the legacy left me by poor Blair, I am, in a great measure, indebted to you?” I remarked, adding a word of thanks and pondering deeply over the revelation she had just made.“I only did what was my duty to you both,” was her response. “She loves you, as I say, and therefore, by a little persuasion you could, I feel convinced, induce her to tell us the truth concerning this man Dawson. She has fled, it is true, but more in fear of what you may think of her when her secret is out, than of the man himself. Recollect,” she added, “Mabel is passionately fond of you, she has confessed it to me many times, but for some extraordinary reason which remains a mystery, she is endeavouring to repress her affection. She fears, I think, that on your part there is only friendship—that you are too confirmed a bachelor to regard her with any thoughts of affection.”“Oh, Mrs Percival!” I cried, with a sudden outpouring, “I tell you, I confess to you that I have loved Mabel all along—I love her now, fondly, passionately, with all that fierce ardour that comes to a man only once in his lifetime. She has misjudged me. It is I who have been foolishly at fault, for I have been blind, I have never read her heart’s secret.”“Then she must know this at once,” was the elderly woman’s sympathetic answer. “We must discover her, at all costs, and tell her. There must be a reunion, and she on her part, must confess to you. I know too well how deeply she loves you,” she added, “I know how she admires you and how, in the secrecy of her room, she has time after time wept long and bitterly because she believed you were cold and blind to the burning passion of her true pure heart.”But how? The whereabouts of my well-beloved were unknown. She had disappeared completely, in order, it seemed, to escape some terrible revelation which she knew must be made sooner or later.In the days that followed, while I lay still weak and helpless, both Ford and Reggie were active in their inquiries, but all in vain. I called in the solicitor, Leighton, in consultation, but he could devise no plan other than to advertise, yet to do so was, we agreed, scarcely fair to her.Curiously enough the dark-faced young woman, Dorothy Dawson, otherwise Dolly, also betrayed the keenest anxiety for Mabel’s welfare. Her mother was Italian, and she spoke English with a slight accent, having always, she said, lived in Italy. Indeed, she called upon me once to express her regret at my illness, and I found that she really improved on acquaintance. Her apparent coarseness was only on account of her mixed nationality, and although she was a shrewd young person possessed of all the subtle Italian cunning, Reggie, I think, found her a bright and amusing companion.All my thoughts were, however, of my sweet lost love, and of that common, arrogant fellow who, by his threats and taunts, held her so irresistibly and secretly in his power.Why had she fled in terror from me, and why had such a dastardly and ingenious attempt been made to kill me?I had solved the secret of the cipher only to be plunged still deeper into the mazes of doubt, despair and mystery, for what the closed book of the future held for me, was as you will see, truly startling and bewildering.The truth when revealed was hard, solid fact, and yet so strange and amazing was it that it staggered all belief.
Walker was puzzled, distinctly puzzled. He had, I found, strapped up my wound during my unconsciousness after probing it and injecting various antiseptics, I suppose. He had also called in consultation Sir Charles Hoare, the very distinguished surgeon of Charing Cross Hospital, and both of them had been greatly puzzled over my symptoms.
When, an hour later, I was sufficiently recovered to be able to talk, Walker held my wrist and asked me how it all happened.
After I had explained as well as I could, he said—
“Well, my dear fellow, I can only say you’ve been about as near to death as any man I’ve ever attended. It was just a case of touch and go with you. When Seton first called me and I saw you I feared that it was all up. Your wound is quite a small one, superficial really, and yet your collapsed condition has been most extraordinary, and there are certain symptoms so mysterious that they have puzzled both Sir Charles and myself.”
“What did the fellow use?”
“Not an ordinary knife, certainly. It was evidently a long, thin-bladed dagger—a stiletto, most probably. I found outside the wound upon the cloth of your overcoat some grease, like animal fat. I am having a portion of it analysed and do you know what I expect to find in it?”
“No; what?”
“Poison,” was his reply. “Sir Charles agrees with me in the theory that you were struck with one of those small, antique poignards with perforated blades, used so frequently in Italy in the fifteenth century.”
“In Italy!” I cried, the very name of that country arousing within me suspicion of an attempt upon me by Dawson or by his close friend, the Monk of Lucca.
“Yes; Sir Charles, who, as you probably know, possesses a large collection of ancient arms, tells me that in mediaeval Florence they used to impregnate animal fat with some very potent poison and then rub it upon the perforated blade. On striking a victim the act of withdrawing the blade from the wound left a portion of the envenomed grease within, which, of course, produced a fatal effect.”
“But you surely don’t anticipate that I’m poisoned?” I gasped.
“Certainly you are poisoned. Your wound would neither account for your long insensibility nor for the strange, livid marks upon your body. Look at the backs of your hands!”
I looked as he directed and was horrified to find upon each small, dark, copper-coloured marks, which also covered my wrists and arms.
“Don’t be too alarmed, Greenwood,” the good-humoured doctor laughed, “you’ve turned the corner, and you’re not going to die yet. You’ve had a narrow squeak of it, and certainly the weapon with which you were struck was as deadly as any that could be devised, but, fortunately, you had a thick overcoat on, besides other heavy clothing, vests and things, all of which removed the greater part of the venomous substance before it could enter the flesh. And a lucky thing it was for you, I can tell you. Had you been attacked like this in summer, you’d have stood no chance.”
“But who did it?” I exclaimed, bewildered, my eyes riveted upon those ugly marks upon my skin, the evidence that some deadly poison was at work within my system.
“Somebody who owed you a very first-class grudge, I should fancy,” laughed the surgeon, who had been my friend for many years and who used sometimes to come out hunting with the Fitzwilliams. “But cheer up, old chap, you’ll have to live on milk and beef-tea for a day or two, have your wound dressed and keep very quiet, and you’ll soon be bobbing about again.”
“That’s all very well,” I replied, impatiently, “but I’ve got a host of things to do, some private matters to attend to.”
“Then you’ll have to let them slide for a day or two, that’s very certain.”
“Yes,” urged Reggie, “you must really keep quiet, Gilbert. I’m only thankful that it isn’t so serious as we at first expected. When the cabman brought you home and Glave tore out for Walker, I really thought you’d die before he arrived. I couldn’t feel any palpitation of your heart, and you were cold as ice.”
“I wonder who was the brute who struck me!” I cried. “Great Jacob! if I’d have caught the fellow, I’d have wrung his precious neck there and then.”
“What’s the use of worrying, so long as you get better quickly?” Reggie asked philosophically.
But I was silent, reflecting that in the belief of Sir Charles Hoare an old Florentine poison dagger had been used. The very fact caused me to suspect that the dastardly attack had been made upon me by my enemies.
We, of course, told Walker nothing of our curious quest, for the present regarding the affair as strictly confidential. Therefore he treated my injury lightly, declaring that I should quickly recover by the exercise of a little patience.
After he had left, shortly before midday, Reggie sat at my bedside and gravely discussed the situation. The two most pressing points at that moment were first to discover the whereabouts of my well-beloved, and secondly to go out to Italy and investigate the Cardinal’s secret.
The days passed, long, weary, gloomy days of early spring, during which I tossed in bed impatient and helpless. I longed to be up and active, but Walker forbade it. He brought me books and papers instead, and enjoined quiet and perfect rest. Although Reggie and I still had our little hunting box down at Helpstone we had not, since Blair’s death, been down there. Besides, the season in the lace trade was an unusually busy one, and Reggie now seemed tied to his counting-house more than ever.
So I was left alone the greater part of the day with Glave to attend to my wants, and with one or two male friends who now and then looked in to smoke and chat.
Thus passed the month of March, my progress being much slower than Walker had at first anticipated. On analysis a very dangerous irritant poison had been discovered mixed with the grease, and it appeared that I had absorbed more of it into my system than was at first believed—hence my tardy recovery.
Mrs Percival, who at our urgent request still remained at Grosvenor Square, visited me sometimes, bringing me fruit and flowers from the hothouses at Mayvill, but she had nothing to report concerning Mabel. The latter had disappeared as completely as though the earth had opened and swallowed her. She was anxious to leave Blair’s house now that it was occupied by the usurpers, but we had cajoled her into remaining in order to keep some check upon the movements of the man Dawson and his daughter. Ford had been so exasperated at the man’s manner that, on the fifth day of the newrégime, he had remonstrated, whereupon Dawson had calmly placed a year’s wages in banknotes in an envelope, and at once dispensed with his further services, as, of course, he had intended to do all along.
The confidential secretary was, however, assisting us, and at that moment was making every inquiry possible to ascertain the whereabouts of his young mistress.
“The house is absolutely topsy-turvy,” declared Mrs Percival one day, as she sat with me. “The servants are in revolt, and poor Noble, the housekeeper, is having a most terrible time. Carter and eight of the other servants gave notice yesterday. This person Dawson represents the very acme of bad manners and bad breeding, yet I overheard him remarking to his daughter two days ago that he actually contemplated putting up for the Reform and entering Parliament! Ah! what would poor Mabel say, if she knew? The girl, Dolly, as he calls her, the common little wench, has established herself in Mabel’s boudoir, and is about to have it re-decorated in daffodil yellow, to suit her complexion, I believe, while as for finances, it seems, from what Mr Leighton says, that poor Mr Blair’s fortune must go entirely through the fellow’s hands.”
“It’s a shame—an abominable shame!” I cried angrily. “We know that the man is an adventurer, and yet we are utterly powerless,” I added bitterly.
“Poor Mabel!” sighed the widow, who was really much devoted to her. “Do you know, Mr Greenwood,” she said, with a sudden air of confidence, “I have thought more than once since her father’s death that she is in possession of the truth of the strange connexion between her father and this unscrupulous man who has been given such power over her and hers. Indeed, she has confessed to me as much. And I believe that, if she would but tell us the truth, we might be able to get rid of this terrible incubus. Why doesn’t she do it—to save herself?”
“Because she is now in fear of him,” I answered in a hard, despairing voice. “She holds some secret of which she lives in terror. That, I believe, accounts for the sudden manner in which she has left her own roof and disappeared. She has left the fellow in undisputed possession of everything.”
I had not forgotten Dawson’s arrogance and self-confidence on the night he had first called upon us.
“But now, Mr Greenwood, will you please excuse me for what I am going to say?” asked Mrs Percival, settling her skirts after a brief pause and looking straight into my face. “Perhaps I have no right to enter into your more private matters in this manner, but I trust you will forgive me when you reflect that I am only speaking on the poor girl’s behalf.”
“Well!” I inquired, somewhat surprised at her sudden change of manner. Usually she was haughty and frigid in the extreme, a scathing critic who had the names of everybody’s cousins aunts and nephews at her fingers’ ends.
“The fact is this,” she went on. “You might, I feel confident, induce her to tell us the truth. You are the only person who possesses any influence with her now that her father is dead, and—permit me to say so—I have reason for knowing that she entertains a very strong regard for you.”
“Yes,” I remarked, unable to restrain a sigh, “we are friends—good friends.”
“More,” declared Mrs Percival, “Mabel loves you.”
“Loves me!” I cried, starting up and supporting myself upon one elbow. “No, I think you must be mistaken. She regards me more as a brother than a lover, and she has, I think, learnt ever since the first day we met in such romantic conditions, to regard me in the light of a protector.
“No,” I added, shaking my head, “there are certain barriers that must prevent her loving me—the difference of our ages, of position and all that.”
“Ah! There you are entirely mistaken,” said the widow, quite frankly. “I happen to know that the very reason why her father left his secret to you was in order that you might profit by its knowledge as he had done, and because he foresaw the direction of Mabel’s affections.”
“How do you know this, Mrs Percival?” I demanded, half inclined to doubt her.
“Because Mr Blair, before making his will, took me into his confidence and asked me frankly whether his daughter had ever mentioned you in such a manner as to cause me to suspect. I told him the truth of course, just as I have now told you. Mabel loves you—loves you very dearly.”
“Then for the legacy left me by poor Blair, I am, in a great measure, indebted to you?” I remarked, adding a word of thanks and pondering deeply over the revelation she had just made.
“I only did what was my duty to you both,” was her response. “She loves you, as I say, and therefore, by a little persuasion you could, I feel convinced, induce her to tell us the truth concerning this man Dawson. She has fled, it is true, but more in fear of what you may think of her when her secret is out, than of the man himself. Recollect,” she added, “Mabel is passionately fond of you, she has confessed it to me many times, but for some extraordinary reason which remains a mystery, she is endeavouring to repress her affection. She fears, I think, that on your part there is only friendship—that you are too confirmed a bachelor to regard her with any thoughts of affection.”
“Oh, Mrs Percival!” I cried, with a sudden outpouring, “I tell you, I confess to you that I have loved Mabel all along—I love her now, fondly, passionately, with all that fierce ardour that comes to a man only once in his lifetime. She has misjudged me. It is I who have been foolishly at fault, for I have been blind, I have never read her heart’s secret.”
“Then she must know this at once,” was the elderly woman’s sympathetic answer. “We must discover her, at all costs, and tell her. There must be a reunion, and she on her part, must confess to you. I know too well how deeply she loves you,” she added, “I know how she admires you and how, in the secrecy of her room, she has time after time wept long and bitterly because she believed you were cold and blind to the burning passion of her true pure heart.”
But how? The whereabouts of my well-beloved were unknown. She had disappeared completely, in order, it seemed, to escape some terrible revelation which she knew must be made sooner or later.
In the days that followed, while I lay still weak and helpless, both Ford and Reggie were active in their inquiries, but all in vain. I called in the solicitor, Leighton, in consultation, but he could devise no plan other than to advertise, yet to do so was, we agreed, scarcely fair to her.
Curiously enough the dark-faced young woman, Dorothy Dawson, otherwise Dolly, also betrayed the keenest anxiety for Mabel’s welfare. Her mother was Italian, and she spoke English with a slight accent, having always, she said, lived in Italy. Indeed, she called upon me once to express her regret at my illness, and I found that she really improved on acquaintance. Her apparent coarseness was only on account of her mixed nationality, and although she was a shrewd young person possessed of all the subtle Italian cunning, Reggie, I think, found her a bright and amusing companion.
All my thoughts were, however, of my sweet lost love, and of that common, arrogant fellow who, by his threats and taunts, held her so irresistibly and secretly in his power.
Why had she fled in terror from me, and why had such a dastardly and ingenious attempt been made to kill me?
I had solved the secret of the cipher only to be plunged still deeper into the mazes of doubt, despair and mystery, for what the closed book of the future held for me, was as you will see, truly startling and bewildering.
The truth when revealed was hard, solid fact, and yet so strange and amazing was it that it staggered all belief.
Chapter Twenty Four.Contains a Terrible Disclosure.Many long and dreary weeks had passed before I had sufficiently recovered to leave the house, and, accompanied by Reggie, take my first drive.It was mid April, the weather was still cold, and gay London had not yet returned from wintering in Monte Carlo, Cairo or Rome. Each year the society swallows, those people who fly south with the first chill day of autumn, return to town later, and each London season appears to be more protracted than before.We drove down Piccadilly to Hyde Park Corner, and then, turning along Constitution Hill, drove along the Mall. Here a great desire seized me to rest for a brief while and enjoy the air in St. James’s Park; therefore we alighted, paid the cabman, and, leaning upon Reggie’s arm, I strolled slowly along the gravelled walks until we found a convenient seat. The glories of St. James’s Park, even on an April day, are a joy for ever to the true Londoners. I often wonder that so few people take advantage of them. The wondrous trees, the delicious sheet of water, all the beauties of English rural scenery, and then the sense that all around you are the great palaces and departments, and offices in which the government of our great Empire is carried on—in other words, that commingling of silence at the core of feverish and tumultuous life outside—all these make St. James’s Park one of the loveliest retreats in England.These things Reggie and I repeated to each other, and then, under the soothing influence of the surroundings, there came musings and reminiscences and the long silences which come between friends and are the best symbols of their complete accord of feeling and opinion.While we were thus seated I became conscious of the fact that we were in the spot above all others where one was certain to see pass, at that time of day most of the prominent political figures of the hour on their way to their various Departments, or to Parliament where the sitting was just commencing. A Cabinet Minister, two Liberal peers, a Conservative whip, and an Under-secretary passed in rapid succession away in the direction of Storey’s Gate.Reggie, who took a great interest in politics, and had often occupied a seat in the Strangers’ Gallery, was pointing out to me the politicians who passed, but my thoughts were elsewhere—with my lost love. Now that Mrs Percival had revealed to me the truth of Mabel’s affection I saw how foolish I had been in making pretence of a coldness towards her that was the very opposite to the feeling which really existed in my heart. I had been a fool, and had now to suffer.During the weeks I had been confined to my room I had obtained a quantity of books, and discovered certain facts concerning the late Cardinal who had divulged the secret—whatever it was—in return for his release. It appeared that Andrea Sannini was a native of Perugia, who became Archbishop of Bologna, and was afterwards given the Cardinal’s hat. A great favourite of Pius IX, he was employed by him upon many delicate missions to the various Powers. As a diplomatist he proved himself possessed of remarkable acumen, therefore the Pope appointed him treasurer-general, as well as director of the world-famous museums and galleries of the Vatican. He was, it appeared, one of the most powerful and distinguished figures in the College of Cardinals, and became extremely prominent for the part he played on the occasion of the entry of the Italian troops into the Eternal City in 1870, while on the death of Pius IX, eight years later, he was believed to be designated as his successor, although on election the choice fell upon his colleague, the late Cardinal Pecci, who became Leo XIII.I was reflecting upon these facts which I had established after a good deal of heavy reading, when Reggie suddenly cried in a low voice,—“Why, look! there’s Dawson’s daughter walking with a man!”I glanced quickly in the direction indicated and saw, crossing the bridge that spanned the lake and approaching in our direction, a well-dressed female figure in a smart jacket of caracul and neat toque, accompanied by a tall thin man in black.Dolly Dawson was walking at his side leisurely, chatting and laughing, while he ever and anon bent towards her making some remarks. As he raised his head to glance across the water I saw that above his overcoat showed a clerical collar with a tiny piece of Roman purple. The man was evidently a canon or other dignitary of the Catholic Church.He was about fifty-five, grey-haired, clean-shaven and wore a silk hat of a somewhat ecclesiastical shape, a rather pleasant-looking man in spite of his thin sensitive lips and pale ascetic face.In an instant it struck me that they had met clandestinely and were sauntering there in order to avoid possible recognition if they walked the streets. The old priest appeared to be treating her with studied politeness, and as I watched him I saw from his slight gesticulations as he spoke that he was no doubt a foreigner.I pointed out the fact to Reggie, who said—“We must watch them, old chap. They mustn’t see us here. I only hope they’ll turn off the other way.”For a moment we followed them with our eyes, fearing that, having crossed the bridge, they would turn in our direction, but fortunately they did not, but turned off to the right along the shore of the lake.“If he really is Italian then he may have come specially from Italy to have an interview with her,” I remarked. For ever since I had met the monk, Antonio, there had seemed some curious connexion between the secret of the dead cardinal and the Church of Rome.“We must try and find out,” declared Reggie. “You mustn’t remain here. It’s getting too cold for you,” he added, springing to his feet. “I’ll follow them while you return home.”“No,” I said. “I’ll walk with you for a bit. I’m interested in the little game,” and, rising also, I linked my arm in his and went forward by the aid of my stick.They were walking side by side in earnest conversation. I could tell by the priest’s quick gesticulations, the way in which he first waved his closed fingers and then raised his open hand and touched his left forearm, that he was speaking of some secret and the possessor of it who had disappeared. If one knows the Italian well, one can follow in a sense the topic of conversation by the gestures, each one having its particular signification.Hurrying as well as I could we gradually gained upon them, for presently they slackened their pace, while the priest spoke earnestly, as though persuading the daughter of the ex-boatswain of theAnnie Curtisto act in some way he was directing.She seemed silent, thoughtful and undecided. Once she shrugged her shoulders, and half-turned from him as though in defiance, when in a moment the wily cleric became all smiles and apologies. They were talking in Italian without a doubt, so as passers-by might not understand their conversation. His clothes, too, I noticed were of a distinctly foreign cut and he wore low shoes, the bright steel buckles of which he had evidently taken off.As they had come across the bridge she had been laughing merrily at some quaint remark of her companion’s, but now it appeared as though all her gaiety had died out and she had realised the true object of the stranger’s mission. The path they had taken led straight across to the Horse Guards’ Parade, and feeling a few moments later that my weakness would not allow me to walk farther, I was compelled to turn back towards the York Column steps, leaving Reggie to make what observations he could.I returned home thoroughly exhausted and very cold. Even my big frieze overcoat, which I used for driving when down at Helpstone, did not keep out the biting wind. So I sat over the fire for fully a couple of hours until my friend at last returned.“I’ve followed them everywhere,” he explained, throwing himself into an armchair opposite me. “He’s evidently threatening her, and she is afraid of him. When they got to the Horse Guards they turned back along Birdcage Walk and then across the Green Park. Afterwards he drove her in a cab to one of Fuller’s shops in Regent Street. The old priest seems mortally afraid of being recognised. Before he left the Green Park he turned up the collar of his overcoat so as to hide that piece of purple at his collar.”“Did you discover his name?”“I followed him to theSavoy, where he is staying. He has given his name as Monsignore Galli, of Rimini.”There our information ended. It, however, was sufficient to show that the ecclesiastic was in London with some distinct purpose, probably to induce the Ceco’s daughter to give him certain information which he earnestly desired, and which he intended to obtain by reason of certain knowledge which he possessed.The days passed with gloom and rain, and Bloomsbury presented its most cheerless aspect. No trace could I discover of my lost love, and no further fact concerning the white-haired monsignore. The latter had, it appeared, left theSavoyon the following evening, returning, in all probability, to the Continent, but whether successful in his mission or no we were in complete ignorance.Dolly Dawson, with whom Reggie had struck up a kind of pleasant friendship, more for the purpose of being able to observe and question her than anything else, called upon us on the day following to inquire after me and hear whether we had learnt anything regarding Mabel’s whereabouts. Her father, she told us, was absent from London for a few days, and she was about to leave for Brighton in order to visit an aunt.Was it possible that Dawson, having learned of my solution of the cipher, had returned to Italy in order to secure the Cardinal’s secret from us? I longed hour by hour for strength to travel out to that spot beside the Serchio, but was held to those narrow rooms by my terrible weakness.Four long and dreary weeks passed, until the middle of May, when I had gathered sufficient strength to walk out alone, and take short strolls in Oxford Street and its vicinity. Burton Blair’s will had been proved, and Leighton, who visited us several times, told us of the recklessness with which the man Dawson was dealing with the estate. That the adventurer was in secret communication with Mabel was proved by the fact that certain cheques signed by her had passed through his hands into the bank, yet strangely enough, he declared entire ignorance of her whereabouts.Dawson had returned to Grosvenor Square, when one day at noon the footman, Carter, was ushered in to me by Glave.I saw by his face that the man was excited, and scarcely had he been shown into my room before he exclaimed, saluting respectfully—“I’ve found out Miss Mabel’s address, sir! Ever since she’s been gone I’ve kept my eyes on the letters sent to post, just as Mr Ford suggested that I should, but Mr Dawson never wrote to her until this morning, by accident I think, he sent a letter to the post addressed to her, among a number of others which he gave to the page-boy. She’s at the Mill House, Church Enstone, near Chipping Norton.”In quick delight I sprang to my feet. I thanked him, ordered Glave to give him a drink and left London by the half-past one train for Oxfordshire.Just before five o’clock I discovered the Mill House, a grey, old-fashioned place standing back behind a high box hedge from the village street at Church Enstone, on the highroad from Aylesbury to Stratford. Before the house was a tiny lawn, bright with tulip borders and sweet-smelling narcissi.A broad-spoken waiting-maid opened the door and ushered me into a small, low, old-fashioned room, where I surprised my love crouched in a big armchair, reading.“Why? Mr Greenwood!” she gasped, springing to her feet, pale and breathless, “you!”“Yes,” I said, when the girl had closed the door and we were alone, “I have found you at last, Mabel—at last!” and, advancing, I took both her small hands tenderly in mine. Then, carried away by the ecstasy of the moment, I looked straight into her eyes, saying, “You have tried to escape me, but to-day I have found you again. I have come, Mabel, to confess openly to you, to tell you something—to tell you, dearest, that—well, that I love you!”“Love me!” she cried, dismayed, starting back, and putting me from her with both her small, white hands. “No! no!” she wailed. “You must not—you cannot love me. It is impossible!”“Why?” I demanded quickly. “I have loved you ever since that first night when we met. Surely you must long ago have detected the secret of my heart.”“Yes,” she faltered, “I have. But alas! it is too late—too late!”“Too late?” I exclaimed. “Why?”She was silent. Her countenance had suddenly blanched to the lips, and I saw that she was trembling from head to foot.I repeated my question seriously, my eyes fixed upon her.“Because,” she answered slowly at last in a tremulous voice so low that I could scarce distinguish the fatal words she uttered, “because I am already married!”“Married!” I gasped, standing rigid. “And your husband! His name!”“Cannot you guess?” she asked. “The man you have already seen—Herbert Hales.” Her eyes were cast down from me as though in shame, while her pointed chin sank upon her panting breast.
Many long and dreary weeks had passed before I had sufficiently recovered to leave the house, and, accompanied by Reggie, take my first drive.
It was mid April, the weather was still cold, and gay London had not yet returned from wintering in Monte Carlo, Cairo or Rome. Each year the society swallows, those people who fly south with the first chill day of autumn, return to town later, and each London season appears to be more protracted than before.
We drove down Piccadilly to Hyde Park Corner, and then, turning along Constitution Hill, drove along the Mall. Here a great desire seized me to rest for a brief while and enjoy the air in St. James’s Park; therefore we alighted, paid the cabman, and, leaning upon Reggie’s arm, I strolled slowly along the gravelled walks until we found a convenient seat. The glories of St. James’s Park, even on an April day, are a joy for ever to the true Londoners. I often wonder that so few people take advantage of them. The wondrous trees, the delicious sheet of water, all the beauties of English rural scenery, and then the sense that all around you are the great palaces and departments, and offices in which the government of our great Empire is carried on—in other words, that commingling of silence at the core of feverish and tumultuous life outside—all these make St. James’s Park one of the loveliest retreats in England.
These things Reggie and I repeated to each other, and then, under the soothing influence of the surroundings, there came musings and reminiscences and the long silences which come between friends and are the best symbols of their complete accord of feeling and opinion.
While we were thus seated I became conscious of the fact that we were in the spot above all others where one was certain to see pass, at that time of day most of the prominent political figures of the hour on their way to their various Departments, or to Parliament where the sitting was just commencing. A Cabinet Minister, two Liberal peers, a Conservative whip, and an Under-secretary passed in rapid succession away in the direction of Storey’s Gate.
Reggie, who took a great interest in politics, and had often occupied a seat in the Strangers’ Gallery, was pointing out to me the politicians who passed, but my thoughts were elsewhere—with my lost love. Now that Mrs Percival had revealed to me the truth of Mabel’s affection I saw how foolish I had been in making pretence of a coldness towards her that was the very opposite to the feeling which really existed in my heart. I had been a fool, and had now to suffer.
During the weeks I had been confined to my room I had obtained a quantity of books, and discovered certain facts concerning the late Cardinal who had divulged the secret—whatever it was—in return for his release. It appeared that Andrea Sannini was a native of Perugia, who became Archbishop of Bologna, and was afterwards given the Cardinal’s hat. A great favourite of Pius IX, he was employed by him upon many delicate missions to the various Powers. As a diplomatist he proved himself possessed of remarkable acumen, therefore the Pope appointed him treasurer-general, as well as director of the world-famous museums and galleries of the Vatican. He was, it appeared, one of the most powerful and distinguished figures in the College of Cardinals, and became extremely prominent for the part he played on the occasion of the entry of the Italian troops into the Eternal City in 1870, while on the death of Pius IX, eight years later, he was believed to be designated as his successor, although on election the choice fell upon his colleague, the late Cardinal Pecci, who became Leo XIII.
I was reflecting upon these facts which I had established after a good deal of heavy reading, when Reggie suddenly cried in a low voice,—
“Why, look! there’s Dawson’s daughter walking with a man!”
I glanced quickly in the direction indicated and saw, crossing the bridge that spanned the lake and approaching in our direction, a well-dressed female figure in a smart jacket of caracul and neat toque, accompanied by a tall thin man in black.
Dolly Dawson was walking at his side leisurely, chatting and laughing, while he ever and anon bent towards her making some remarks. As he raised his head to glance across the water I saw that above his overcoat showed a clerical collar with a tiny piece of Roman purple. The man was evidently a canon or other dignitary of the Catholic Church.
He was about fifty-five, grey-haired, clean-shaven and wore a silk hat of a somewhat ecclesiastical shape, a rather pleasant-looking man in spite of his thin sensitive lips and pale ascetic face.
In an instant it struck me that they had met clandestinely and were sauntering there in order to avoid possible recognition if they walked the streets. The old priest appeared to be treating her with studied politeness, and as I watched him I saw from his slight gesticulations as he spoke that he was no doubt a foreigner.
I pointed out the fact to Reggie, who said—“We must watch them, old chap. They mustn’t see us here. I only hope they’ll turn off the other way.”
For a moment we followed them with our eyes, fearing that, having crossed the bridge, they would turn in our direction, but fortunately they did not, but turned off to the right along the shore of the lake.
“If he really is Italian then he may have come specially from Italy to have an interview with her,” I remarked. For ever since I had met the monk, Antonio, there had seemed some curious connexion between the secret of the dead cardinal and the Church of Rome.
“We must try and find out,” declared Reggie. “You mustn’t remain here. It’s getting too cold for you,” he added, springing to his feet. “I’ll follow them while you return home.”
“No,” I said. “I’ll walk with you for a bit. I’m interested in the little game,” and, rising also, I linked my arm in his and went forward by the aid of my stick.
They were walking side by side in earnest conversation. I could tell by the priest’s quick gesticulations, the way in which he first waved his closed fingers and then raised his open hand and touched his left forearm, that he was speaking of some secret and the possessor of it who had disappeared. If one knows the Italian well, one can follow in a sense the topic of conversation by the gestures, each one having its particular signification.
Hurrying as well as I could we gradually gained upon them, for presently they slackened their pace, while the priest spoke earnestly, as though persuading the daughter of the ex-boatswain of theAnnie Curtisto act in some way he was directing.
She seemed silent, thoughtful and undecided. Once she shrugged her shoulders, and half-turned from him as though in defiance, when in a moment the wily cleric became all smiles and apologies. They were talking in Italian without a doubt, so as passers-by might not understand their conversation. His clothes, too, I noticed were of a distinctly foreign cut and he wore low shoes, the bright steel buckles of which he had evidently taken off.
As they had come across the bridge she had been laughing merrily at some quaint remark of her companion’s, but now it appeared as though all her gaiety had died out and she had realised the true object of the stranger’s mission. The path they had taken led straight across to the Horse Guards’ Parade, and feeling a few moments later that my weakness would not allow me to walk farther, I was compelled to turn back towards the York Column steps, leaving Reggie to make what observations he could.
I returned home thoroughly exhausted and very cold. Even my big frieze overcoat, which I used for driving when down at Helpstone, did not keep out the biting wind. So I sat over the fire for fully a couple of hours until my friend at last returned.
“I’ve followed them everywhere,” he explained, throwing himself into an armchair opposite me. “He’s evidently threatening her, and she is afraid of him. When they got to the Horse Guards they turned back along Birdcage Walk and then across the Green Park. Afterwards he drove her in a cab to one of Fuller’s shops in Regent Street. The old priest seems mortally afraid of being recognised. Before he left the Green Park he turned up the collar of his overcoat so as to hide that piece of purple at his collar.”
“Did you discover his name?”
“I followed him to theSavoy, where he is staying. He has given his name as Monsignore Galli, of Rimini.”
There our information ended. It, however, was sufficient to show that the ecclesiastic was in London with some distinct purpose, probably to induce the Ceco’s daughter to give him certain information which he earnestly desired, and which he intended to obtain by reason of certain knowledge which he possessed.
The days passed with gloom and rain, and Bloomsbury presented its most cheerless aspect. No trace could I discover of my lost love, and no further fact concerning the white-haired monsignore. The latter had, it appeared, left theSavoyon the following evening, returning, in all probability, to the Continent, but whether successful in his mission or no we were in complete ignorance.
Dolly Dawson, with whom Reggie had struck up a kind of pleasant friendship, more for the purpose of being able to observe and question her than anything else, called upon us on the day following to inquire after me and hear whether we had learnt anything regarding Mabel’s whereabouts. Her father, she told us, was absent from London for a few days, and she was about to leave for Brighton in order to visit an aunt.
Was it possible that Dawson, having learned of my solution of the cipher, had returned to Italy in order to secure the Cardinal’s secret from us? I longed hour by hour for strength to travel out to that spot beside the Serchio, but was held to those narrow rooms by my terrible weakness.
Four long and dreary weeks passed, until the middle of May, when I had gathered sufficient strength to walk out alone, and take short strolls in Oxford Street and its vicinity. Burton Blair’s will had been proved, and Leighton, who visited us several times, told us of the recklessness with which the man Dawson was dealing with the estate. That the adventurer was in secret communication with Mabel was proved by the fact that certain cheques signed by her had passed through his hands into the bank, yet strangely enough, he declared entire ignorance of her whereabouts.
Dawson had returned to Grosvenor Square, when one day at noon the footman, Carter, was ushered in to me by Glave.
I saw by his face that the man was excited, and scarcely had he been shown into my room before he exclaimed, saluting respectfully—
“I’ve found out Miss Mabel’s address, sir! Ever since she’s been gone I’ve kept my eyes on the letters sent to post, just as Mr Ford suggested that I should, but Mr Dawson never wrote to her until this morning, by accident I think, he sent a letter to the post addressed to her, among a number of others which he gave to the page-boy. She’s at the Mill House, Church Enstone, near Chipping Norton.”
In quick delight I sprang to my feet. I thanked him, ordered Glave to give him a drink and left London by the half-past one train for Oxfordshire.
Just before five o’clock I discovered the Mill House, a grey, old-fashioned place standing back behind a high box hedge from the village street at Church Enstone, on the highroad from Aylesbury to Stratford. Before the house was a tiny lawn, bright with tulip borders and sweet-smelling narcissi.
A broad-spoken waiting-maid opened the door and ushered me into a small, low, old-fashioned room, where I surprised my love crouched in a big armchair, reading.
“Why? Mr Greenwood!” she gasped, springing to her feet, pale and breathless, “you!”
“Yes,” I said, when the girl had closed the door and we were alone, “I have found you at last, Mabel—at last!” and, advancing, I took both her small hands tenderly in mine. Then, carried away by the ecstasy of the moment, I looked straight into her eyes, saying, “You have tried to escape me, but to-day I have found you again. I have come, Mabel, to confess openly to you, to tell you something—to tell you, dearest, that—well, that I love you!”
“Love me!” she cried, dismayed, starting back, and putting me from her with both her small, white hands. “No! no!” she wailed. “You must not—you cannot love me. It is impossible!”
“Why?” I demanded quickly. “I have loved you ever since that first night when we met. Surely you must long ago have detected the secret of my heart.”
“Yes,” she faltered, “I have. But alas! it is too late—too late!”
“Too late?” I exclaimed. “Why?”
She was silent. Her countenance had suddenly blanched to the lips, and I saw that she was trembling from head to foot.
I repeated my question seriously, my eyes fixed upon her.
“Because,” she answered slowly at last in a tremulous voice so low that I could scarce distinguish the fatal words she uttered, “because I am already married!”
“Married!” I gasped, standing rigid. “And your husband! His name!”
“Cannot you guess?” she asked. “The man you have already seen—Herbert Hales.” Her eyes were cast down from me as though in shame, while her pointed chin sank upon her panting breast.