The Project Gutenberg eBook ofCobraThis ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.Title: CobraAuthor: Martin BrownRussell HolmanRelease date: December 3, 2023 [eBook #72297]Language: EnglishOriginal publication: New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1925Credits: Al Haines*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK COBRA ***
This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.
Title: CobraAuthor: Martin BrownRussell HolmanRelease date: December 3, 2023 [eBook #72297]Language: EnglishOriginal publication: New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1925Credits: Al Haines
Title: Cobra
Author: Martin BrownRussell Holman
Author: Martin Brown
Russell Holman
Release date: December 3, 2023 [eBook #72297]
Language: English
Original publication: New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1925
Credits: Al Haines
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK COBRA ***
BYMARTIN BROWNANDRUSSELL HOLMAN
A NOVELIZATION OF THEFAMOUS STAGE SUCCESSBY MARTIN BROWN
Illustrated with scenes from the photoplayA Ritz-Paramount Picture starringRUDOLPH VALENTINO
GROSSET & DUNLAPPUBLISHERS NEW YORK
Made in the United States of America
COPYRIGHT, 1925, BYGROSSET & DUNLAP
COBRA
Even for southern Italy, where superlative scenery is as common as wine, the view from the terrace of the Café Del Mare on such a night was enchanting.
In the moonlight the rocky shore line for half a mile or more was almost as clearly defined as by day. A hundred precipitous feet below, the oily waters of the bay gleamed like highly polished glass. The riding lights of a score of sea craft shone palely. Four miles to sea, Capri nestled brightly in the semi-darkness. Only for the intervening hills, the café might have commanded a spectacle of the acres of crowding lighting that was Naples, five miles to the northeastward across a segment of the crescent bay.
Nevertheless the corpulent Italian with the bristling moustachios scowled. He stood in the doorway of the Café Del Mare, with fairyland spread before him, and scowled. His grievance was professional. He was the proprietor of the café, and his annoyance at the moonlit panorama was due to the fact that it had not brought him more customers and liras.
He turned from his frowning contemplation of the bay and vented his mental displeasure upon the dozen or more Italians chattering around the tables on the terrace. Bah! They would sit there all night and talk and quarrel and laugh, but they bought only once in a great while. There was little money in Italians. They were useful only as local color for the real spenders, the tourists. For some reason the Café Del Mare did not attract many tourists.
At the present moment the establishment sheltered but three, all of them seated inside. It was stuffy and dimly lighted in there. Also a piano, a guitar and a harp were being tortured with execrable results only a few feet from them. But they seemed to prefer the discords to the noise of the natives on the terrace.
Of the three tourists, the hawk-like Englishman and his mouse-like wife had already incurred the displeasure of Signor Palladino, the proprietor. The Englishman, who was in Italy for his health, had complained testily in schoolroom Italian that the salad was indigestible and the wine not at all what he had ordered. There had been words, and hostilities would probably be renewed when the check arrived.
The third tourist, sitting apart by the open window overlooking the bay, was young and apparently an American. He did not, however, drink everything on the card, as Americans in Italy do. He had been sitting there now for nearly an hour, his one bottle of wine consumed. An expression of quiet, well-bred contentment was upon his rather delicate blond features. He was an unobtrusive patron, but not a profitable one.
Seated quite near the American was the remaining male sharing the hospitality of Signor Palladino's red-tiled roof and enduring his "orchestra." He was also young, and strikingly handsome in the dark, polished, bold-eyed manner of the true Italian aristocrat. He could be accused neither of parsimony nor of abstemiousness. Although he had been lounging at his table but ten minutes, already he had drunk two bottles of wine and had ordered a third. The black-eyed little flower-girl, noting his thirst and his good looks, entered from her vain round of the terrace tables and approached him with her wares. He saw in a rapid appraisal how pretty and vivacious she was. His dark eyes narrowed slightly and a smile curled his full lips. He not only bought from her; he pressed her white hand and bestowed upon her her largest gratuity in many weeks.
The proprietor watched this bit of by-play, and his scowl deepened. He knew this young Italian well; he had known his father and his grandfather before him. As the flower girl, still blushing, hurried past Signor Palladino to think it over in the outer air, the proprietor caught her by the elbow and muttered a guttural reprimand, "Tend to your business."
She smiled pertly and flashed back, "The customers are my business. You tell me always to be nice to them. Besides—he is very good looking."
"And very penniless," sneered Palladino.
"Ah, but his looks—they excuse a lot," the flower miss insisted softly.
"They do not pay bills. And they cause trouble," retorted the proprietor. As she flounced away, he watched the trim back of the half-grown girl. Palladino sighed, heavily, as fat, old men sigh. He had cherished ambitions in the flower-girl's direction for a while. But, alas!hewas not young and handsome and bold.
"Ah, buona sera, signor," rumbled a voice at the proprietor's elbow. For such a large fellow, Palladino turned quickly. His face assumed for an instant the professional mask of benignant welcome. But he dropped it quickly as he recognized the owner of the voice.
The newcomer was a huge hulk of an Italian well past middle age, though trying hard to conceal the fact. He was much too ostentatiously clad in garments that fairly sobbed for the immediate attention of tailor and laundress. The purple cravat, for instance, though tied with extreme care, was stabbed with a diamond so immense that it could not possibly be real. The cravat was spotted with grease, and its borders were frayed. The accoster of Signor Palladino carried in his yellow-gloved hand a thick yellow cane, ornately carved and wore a slightly wilted carnation in his button-hole.
"Signor Minardi has doubtless come to pay his reckoning of last evening," suggested the proprietor in Italian and with evident sarcasm.
Victor Minardi coughed, to conceal confusion. He had expected a chilly reception. Last night there had been rather an unpleasant altercation between himself and Signor Palladino. Having returned but yesterday from a two months' business sojourn in Rome, Victor Minardi had assembled a few friends in the evening at the Café Del Mare and officiated at a welcome home reception. At the conclusion, very late, of the festivities he had been quite confused and loud. He had lacked sufficient liras to pay his reckoning. There had been words and threats, but he had escaped with the debt still unsettled.
"Perhaps I will very soon pay you what I owe—and more," offered Minardi. The blinking of his small, weak eyes was intended to be shrewdness.
Palladino shrugged his fat shoulders.
"If Count Rodrigo Torriani is here," Miniardi continued, "I will maybe tell you more quickly than you think. Tell me—is he here?"
The proprietor sniffed at Minardi and said contemptuously, "You expect Count Torriani to pay for you and you do not even know what he looks like?"
"I have not the honor of his acquaintance," said Minardi, "but my daughter Rosa has. And I have with me a specimen of his handwriting that may prove valuable." He drew from his pocket a wrinkled sheet of paper. As Palladino, curiosity at last aroused, reached for it, Minardi held it gently out of his reach. "If there is somewhere we can talk—in private," offered Minardi. He looked around and met with a start the interested face of the little flower-girl, who in her rounds had paused near them. She moved away at once, the suspicious looks of the two men following her.
Palladino plucked at the shiny sleeve of Minardi and they stepped outside in the shadow of the cool stucco wall. In the flickering light of the ornamental lantern near the entrance-way, the former read from the paper.
Rosa mia:
My car will be waiting outside the Café Del Mare at ten to-morrow night. I can hardly live until I again kiss your sweet lips.
RODRIGO.
Palladino looked significantly at his companion, his natural avarice stirred by the opportunity held out to him. "That he should break the heart of my innocent Rosa!—there are things, Palladino, that a father cannot endure. My family, my honor demand satisfaction."
The proprietor recognized the feelings of the outraged father by advising that they be voiced in a lower tone.
"After all, Count Torriani is not the only Rodrigo in Italy," said Palladino. "Your daughter Rosa must know more than one."
"I intercepted this note at noon, when I awoke. A boy brought it when Rosa was in Naples at her work. I questioned her when she returned. She has admitted that Torriani is the man. There are other letters more ardent than this one. See!" And he drew out a packet from his pocket.
Palladino pondered the matter. In his mercenary breast blended the new Fascisti-inspired dislike of the aristocrats with the ingrained contempt of the shopkeeper for his betters. He did not especially loathe young Count Rodrigo Torriani, last scion of a once powerful but now quite penniless family of local aristocrats. Nor did he fear him. He merely debated in his mind whether the gossip regarding the Torriani debts was accurate and whether to join Minardi in his venture was not to blackmail an empty purse. About Rosa's alleged injury and her father's concern over it, Palladino had no illusions. The question was simply whether the letters in Minardi's greasy coat were valuable enough to merit a risk. On the whole, he decided they were. He drew Minardi closer to him and drew up a plan.
The young Italian inside the Café Del Mare, having partaken of his fourth bottle of wine and glanced at his watch, was preparing to depart when the proprietor, looking very unctuous and important, approached and whispered into his ear, for several minutes. The young man smiled and nodded. The smile approached a sneer as his eyes followed the back of Palladino lumbering over to the side door of the café, which led down steps to the sea-wall, and opening it. Palladino peered back at his patron and indicated that he might use this exit. The young man again nodded. As the flower-girl passed his table he nodded to her too, but differently. The nod told the flower-girl that what she had stolen in to whisper to him five minutes previously was being confirmed. The young man drained his wineglass. Drama lurked in the offing. He was thoroughly enjoying himself.
What happened next promised at first to add to his rather sardonic sense of humor. The young American, having paid his bill, arose, took up his hat and prepared to depart. Since the newly-opened side door was handy and framed an alluring view of the moonlit bay, the American went through it and down the steps toward the sea wall. At once the young Italian, for whom the door had been opened, arose and slipped over to the shadows just inside the exit. He did not have to wait long. Almost at once came heavy scurrying footsteps outside. A deep voice roared in Italian, "So, Count Torriani, we meet at last!" Minardi had leaped from his ambush.
Warned by the proprietor that the trap was set and to seize the admirer of Rosa as he sought escape through the side door, Minardi accosted the American with the exuberance of a shaggy great St. Bernard dog leaping at a burglar.
"There is some mistake," protested the American quietly in Italian. He was not nearly as excited as his accuser.
"No, no," cried Minardi, whipping himself into a fine frenzy. "I have sought you all day. About my Rosa. You have mistreated her. It is a serious thing." He laid hold of the coat lapels of the American, at the same time wondering why the fellow did not bid him be quiet and come along to talk business in private. Palladino, lurking further along in the shadow and quite aware a mistake was being made, deemed silence the better course for himself. Let Minardi suffer for his error, the stupid cabbage.
"I know nothing of your Rosa. You have the wrong man," said the American, and he tried to pass his tormentor.
"Bah! You cannot fool me. I am Rosa's papa. Look!" Minardi whipped the letters from his pocket and waved them in the air. He turned and waved them in the faces of the dozen or more of his countrymen who, attracted by the noise, had at once deserted their tables and wine and were clustering about him.
"This man has injured my daughter, my family! He must pay. Is it not right?" cried Minardi, inspired by his audience. They muttered. They regarded the American with sullen suspicion and rising anger. They had no interest either in Minardi or his daughter. But they were of a low order of city-bred Italians who are always spoiling for a row and are on the side of the contestant with the louder voice.
To the young aristocrat, viewing and hearing the controversy from the shelter of Signor Palladino's side door, it seemed that at this point the comedy had proceeded far enough. It had ceased to appeal to him. So he stepped out and down the stone steps and ranged himself beside the American, who had turned a little white in the face of the rising menace but was otherwise composed.
"Can I be of assistance?" asked the Italian.
The American welcomed the unlooked-for offer. He pointed to Minardi. "This man is accusing me of something I know nothing about. He evidently thinks I am someone else. I can't seem to make him see his mistake." At the same time he handed his card to his would-be rescuer.
The card read: "John Dorning, Dorning and Son, Antiques, New York."
The young Italian flicked the card with a flourish. His lean jaw squared and he turned on Minardi. "You have made a grave error," he said rapidly in Italian. "This gentleman is an American. He is not the person you seek at all." And as Minardi broke into a shrill protest, he interrupted, "Stop! Do you want to be arrested? Do you wish the American Consul to prosecute you? Fool! Go! And tell your friends to go also."
He turned swiftly to the American and said in low-voiced English, "And we had better go too. These people are stupid and quarrelsome. Come along. My car is the other side of the inn."
He turned his back upon the crowd and forged away rapidly, the American following. They broke through bushes and the scent of disturbed flowers assailed their nostrils. They dodged through shadows. At length they came out where a low-hanging Isotta roadster was drawn up just out of the road. Behind them sounded pursuing voices and the crackling of bushes. Some one hurled a stick that landed in a flower bed short of them. They could distinguish Minardi's voice booming futilely amid the din.
The young Italian turned his head back toward them and laughed derisively into the moonlight as he pressed his foot upon the starter of his car. With a roar and the sudden pungent odor of petrol, the Isotta leaped forth like a leopard springing at a bullock.
A half mile of silent and hard driving, along the shore road, and the car was whipped abruptly to the left into a rough dirt highway and started climbing. The driver slowed down, due to rocks and ruts, furnishing an opportunity for conversation.
"I neglected to introduce myself," he smiled. "I am Rodrigo Torriani, the admirer of Rosa."
John Dorning jolted about in sober silence.
"That, of course, put me under obligation to rescue you when the fool Minardi mixed us up," explained Count Rodrigo gayly. "Now I am taking you to my home—for a drink, at least, if you will honor me."
"It is I who am honored," said Dorning without enthusiasm. He did not wish to offend his rescuer. But he would have preferred now to have banished this whole unpleasant episode from his mind by being taken at once back to his hotel in Naples. He had had himself driven out along the shore in an open carriage from his stuffy hotel for the sake of the view and the air. The carriage and its patient driver were even now waiting for him at the café. Dorning had sat at the Café Del Mare for half an hour absorbing a bottle of wine and the glories of the moonlit bay. Then had come this tumultuous destruction of his solitude, followed by the jouncing escape beside this handsome young Italian of about his own age, which was twenty-five. Dorning fancied neither the man nor his gayety.
"Ah—we arrive!" sang out Count Rodrigo suddenly and celebrated the fact by swinging so sharply in through the iron gates that Dorning was almost flung from the seat. They glided around a circular drive and stopped in front of a typical stucco Renaissance palace looming massively in the half-darkness and even in the bad light showing the need of repair.
The Italian led the way through the great grilled door and into the stone-paved entrance hall with its high ceilings and elaborately frescoed walls. John Dorning's interest was aroused at once. Whatever the Count Torriani was, his residence showed almost immediate prospects to the entering visitor of being a treasure house of Italian art and sculpture.
Count Rodrigo clapped his hands. "Maria! Maria!" he called. And to Dorning, "Please sit down." He glanced at his guest, who was wholly occupied in surveying the shadowy Renaissance angels and saints on the wall opposite. "You are interested in murals!—but, of course, Dorning and Son. I remember the shop on Fifth Avenue. I was in New York last summer. I shall be glad to show you around this place. I have some originals that are considered very good."
He clapped his hands again. "Maria!" he called. Maria appeared. She was past middle age and fat and sleepy. She panted in anxiously and nodded vigorously as Rodrigo ordered wine. She panted in again soon, a scrolled solid silver tray with wine bottles and glasses in her hand, and set it down before the two men. They drank solemnly to the destruction of Minardi.
John Dorning was almost immediately glad that he had come. Amid these splendors of a bygone day he was at home. Peace and contentment, aided by the wine, crept over him. The sixteenth century chair upon which he sat, the intricately carved table which held his wine-glass, the frescoed walls, the painted ceilings—these were part of his world, the world he loved.
Young Count Rodrigo sensed what sort of man his guest was at once, and was pleased. For there was in the young Italian, among other qualities less desirable, a strain of appreciation of the beautiful. He was proud of the masterpieces of art which his run-down palace sheltered. He abandoned abruptly his description, over the second glass of wine, of how Minardi's mistake had come about and switched the conversation to the Renaissance and what it owed to the famous Giotto, a rare specimen of whose work hung before them.
John Dorning warmed up at once. In half an hour he found himself liking his host and rendering silent tribute to the man's intimate knowledge of the whole range of Italian painting and sculpture. The flippancy had gone out of Torriani's manner. The two men argued, agreed, split, and drank more wine. Maria, waddling in and out with refreshments, wondered if she would ever again get to her bed. Dorning suggested that one trouble with the Renaissance painters was that they laid too little emphasis upon technical perfection.
"Technical perfection—bah!" cried Torriani, springing up, spilling his wine, striding over to the painting by Giotto. "Look at this, man! Look at it. And try to tell me what knowledge of form and mere technical cleverness have got to do with a genius like Giotto, whofeels, who spreads the very breath of life upon canvas!" The black eyes flashed. Torriani thumped his chest.
Dorning wondered, in a whimsical turn of thought, how a man like this could also be the "admirer of Rosa."
It was long after midnight when Rodrigo escorted his guest to a bedchamber once occupied by Lorenzo the Magnificent.
The morning sun flooded the bedroom of the Torrianis. It glinted off the massive antique furniture, revealing its beauty and the need of an immediate dusting. It invaded the region of shadows and comparative coolness underneath the canopy of the immense four-poster bed.
Though a new day was confronting him, the heir of the Torrianis slept on.
In a larger sense, a new and rather cloudy day had six months previously dawned for young Count Rodrigo Torriani, and he had not awakened to that either. It had brought the loss of his family fortune, debts, Signor Minardi, and an uncertainty as to his future. Rodrigo was vaguely aware of this new metaphorical day. He had opened one eye to it sufficiently to dismiss all his servants save Maria, who had sullenly refused to be dismissed. He had started tentative negotiations to rent the palace that had been occupied by his family for three centuries. But, beyond these gestures, he had continued to pursue the same blithe, unproductive course as before.
Rodrigo was in this respect a great deal like his late father, Angelo Torriani, the handsome, impulsive gentleman who was responsible largely for the plight in which the young man now found himself. Angelo Torriani too had been known even in the later years of his life as a waster. To be sure, the elder Torriani had once mingled a bit of politics with his pleasures. It was this unusual mixture of interests that had led to Angelo Torriani's marriage.
For, sent upon a diplomatic mission by his government, the Italian sportsman-politician, after twenty years of falling in and out of love without jeopardizing his bachelorhood in the slightest, had suddenly lost his heart utterly to the quiet, pretty and rather puritanical daughter of a minor English title whom he encountered at a social function in London.
Angelo, like his son after him, had always been selfish in his loves. He was a taker rather than a giver. But when he found that his accustomed sweeping and very Latin style of love-making was not impressing the sensible Edythe Newbold, he became a suppliant. He made solemn promises to abandon his manner of living and he neglected his political duties. And, having at last carried the citadel of her affections by this method, he found that he must also batter down further defences in the form of a father who thoroughly disliked him. Sir Henry Newbold had amassed his fortune and title in the Indian trade. He distrusted foreigners. He particularly distrusted foreigners who did not work. To obtain the hand of Edythe in marriage, Angelo Torriani had to discard the habits and prejudices of three centuries of idling Italian ancestors, enter Sir Henry's business, and go to India.
During the second of the sixteen years which Angelo Torriani spent intermittently in Calcutta as resident manager of Newbold and Company, Rodrigo was born to Edythe. In the fifteenth year, Rodrigo was sent to England to school. In the same year, Sir Henry Newbold died, an elder son of the self-made knight succeeding to the management of the business. For a year Angelo Torriani carried on in an environment and trade which he had always hated. When, at the end of that period, Edythe, never in robust health and of the type which cannot become accustomed to the tropics, succumbed to a fever, Angelo resigned his position and left India forever.
Returning, after those many years, to the palace of his fathers at Naples, Angelo was for many weeks too much overcome with a very sincere grief hardly to show himself outside the iron gates. But then the reaction smote him. He became, after a few months, nearly the adventuresome Angelo of old. He visited Florence, Rome, the Riviera. He re-entered politics, tentatively at first, then more boldly. He began to notice again that women were smiling at him and then lowering lashes. He spent freely both money and energy. Still a handsome, virile figure at forty-five, he discovered that life, after all, was still good. He struck a rapid pace after a while and maintained it until about six months before Rodrigo Torriani met John Dorning at the Café Del Mare. Angelo Torriani then died quite as suddenly as he had fallen in love with Edythe Newbold. The sixteen years in India, busy but abstemious years, had probably prolonged his life. But the blood of the Torrianis, which killed young, had done for him at last.
Rodrigo was a lively, handsome child with large, snapping black eyes, eyes such as friends of mothers jokingly say augur ill for the girls they encounter when the child grows up. In this case, the prophecy worked out. The boy grew up, energetic, quick-tempered, and very attractive.
At Eton, and, later, at Oxford, whence he had been sent from India at the insistence of his mother, Rodrigo was not Edythe Newbold's son, but Angelo Torriani's. He was naturally more popular with his fellows than with his instructors. The latter did not like it because he apparently never studied. This was particularly irritating to the plodding dons in view of the fact that Rodrigo always passed his examinations with ease. He specialized in subjects which he liked, and he did not like subjects for which he did not possess a natural aptitude that made studying almost superfluous. Moreover, he was quick-witted and he had had excellent English tutor in India.
Rodrigo spent most of his vacation periods in the London town house of his mother's brother, Sir William Newbold, and the merchant-knight's rather stuffy family. The family consisted of Rodrigo's prim aunt, who did not at all possess her late sister's good looks or tolerance, and two weedy blond daughters. Though the latter were both about his own age and his own experience among the fair sex was at the time limited by his scholastic activities, he yet treated Evelyn and Sylvia Newbold with a blasé condescension which they did not fancy in the least. Neither did his Aunt Helen, who had esteemed Angelo Torriani as quite unworthy of marrying into the Newbolds and was continually urging Sir William to keep a tight leash upon Angelo's son. Rodrigo, thus, during his leisure time from Oxford found constant barriers in the way of his wandering very far in London on pleasure bent.
It was the irony of fate that a social affair given under the circumspect auspices of his uncle should have led to his acquaintance with Sophie Binner.
Most of the Newbolds' acquaintances were people like themselves—rich, self-satisfied, very respectable, and quite boring. The entertainments given by this set for their very carefully selected guests were for the most part the soul of convention. Bridge for the usual useless prizes, musicales by visiting celebrities, box parties at the opera. On the evening that Sir William came home from the office and suggested that the Newbolds give a Treasure Hunt, his wife was at first mystified and then scandalized.
The Treasure Hunt was the fad of a rather fast set of London society. It was in the nature of a hare and hounds chase, without the hares. The participants started out from a central spot toward a distant goal, aided at frequent intervals by clews posted upon trees, fences and other places. The first to arrive at the goal was the winner. The hunts were usually accompanied by considerable wining, dining and hilarity of a rather rowdy type.
In answer to his wife's disapproval, Sir William announced that a mutual and very respectable friend of theirs had been describing to him a Treasure Hunt in which the friend had participated and which had quite converted him to the sport.
"We have to give a party next month," Sir William urged in his fussy voice. "I think our set needs a little stirring up. Why shouldn't we have a Treasure Hunt! Many conservative people are going in for them. George Trevor said he was quite charmed. And it is important in a business way that I do something in his honor while he is in London. What do you say?"
After several days of deliberation, Helen Newbold yielded. The date was set and preparations were started. Rodrigo, who had just come down from Oxford for three weeks, was interested at once. For the first time since he had been familiar with his uncle's family, they they were about to do something that seemed to promise him some pleasure. He even asked permission to invite some of his Oxford friends who were in town to share in the fun, and received the permission after some questioning by his aunt as to the respectability of these added guests. He invited William Terhune, a Rhodes scholar from South Dakota, a raw-boned, husky chap, crew man and born pleasure-seeker, and Leslie Bond, a classmate from London whom Rodrigo admired for his witty tongue and suavity.
The Treasure Hunters were to travel in automobiles and Rodrigo secured the use of his uncle's light sedan, neatly side-stepping the suggestion that his two cousins travel along with Terhune, Bond and himself.
A large crowd of colorless people gathered one June afternoon in the drive of the Newbolds' town house and received a light collation and their instructions for the hunt. The first directions were to take them out to a London suburb, and the cavalcade started sedately enough, most of the sojourners undecided whether or not the Newbolds were attempting something revolutionary and not quite respectable in this new type of entertainment.
Rodrigo and his two friends were in a chaffing, carefree mood. Rodrigo was never a conservative driver and soon had the borrowed car moving at a pace that started the bobbies at the street intersections frowning and waving admonitory hands at him. Having attained the open country and the little tea house, to which their instructions had led them, in advance of the others, the young men did not stop to partake of the refreshments arranged for them by their host, but set off rapidly for the next rendezvous. This they never attained.
For a half mile or so beyond the tea house, they overtook an open runabout containing two very attractive young ladies. The blonde who was driving was particularly pretty in a bold, artificially arranged way. The girl at the wheel glanced back at the rapidly approaching car, flashed a friendly but taunting smile at it, and then stepped upon the accelerator and attempted to pull away from it. Rodrigo and his companions were interested and aroused at once. Rodrigo sped up and the race was on.
The sedan's glittering radiator-cap was almost even with the left rear wheel of the other car. Down a hill the cars swooped. Fifty yards farther on, the car of Rodrigo was exactly abreast of the runabout. Then came a sharp turn to the left, which the cars took together and plunged up the grade leading to the little rustic bridge neck and neck.
And here came catastrophe.
For the turn and the bridge were surprises to both drivers. It was a small wooden bridge spanning a ravine and a narrow stream running swiftly far below. A stout railing stretched along either side of the road, across the bridge. There was room for two carefully driven cars to pass each other. But not room enough for two speed maniacs.
The thunder of the flying cars across the loose planks was broken by a splintering crash. When the dust cleared away, the hood and front wheels of the runabout were disclosed suspended in mid-air over the ravine, the glass of the front lights and wind-shield were no more. Yet the motor of the runabout was still throbbing, and the two girls, though dust-covered and with faces bleeding slightly from tiny bits of glass that had pricked their skin, were unhurt. They discovered this after moving cautiously around a little.
When Rodrigo and his companions drove slowly back to them, offering succor, both girls were smiling, though a little uneasily to be sure, and the girl at the wheel was showing disturbing signs of putting the motor into reverse and seeking to back off the heavy piece of bridge-railing that, jammed in between their rear mud-guard and the side of the car, was the only thing preventing the machine from plunging off into eternity.
"I say, leave the motor alone!" Rodrigo shouted at once and scrambled hurriedly out from behind the wheel of the sedan, his companions following.
"And whose motor is it, may I ask?" the pretty blonde in the driver's seat came back promptly, at the same time jabbing furiously at levers.
Rodrigo was by this time at her side and, horrified, was clutching for her wrist. "Lady, lady," he cried half in fear and half in mockery. "Shut off the motor and get out quick. You're on the brink of eternity."
"Yes, Sophie, do," the other girl, slightly older and a brunette, agreed.
At first inclined to be stubborn, Sophie at length permitted herself to be helped down from her precarious perch and her companion followed, Terhune and Bond re-inforcing Rodrigo.
Thus the Oxonians made the acquaintance of Sophie Binner and Adele Du Bois, ladies of the chorus in "The Golden Slipper," the current revue at the Gayety. On the promise of stopping at the nearest garage and having the wrecked machine sent for, the girls consented to enter the sedan and be driven back to London. By the time the outskirts of the city were reached, the party was a very gay one and Sir William Newbold's Treasure Hunt was quite forgotten.
Rodrigo was especially interested in Sophie. He had at that time met very few ladies of the stage informally. The frankness, sharp tongue and cream-and-gold beauty of Sophie intrigued him. Rodrigo was rather adroit with all types of women, even at twenty. He flattered Sophie half seriously, half banteringly, exchangedbon mots, made an engagement in a low voice to see her again. Bill Terhune told her on the quiet that Rodrigo was the son of a real Count, thus increasing many fold the force of the impression the good-looking Latin had made upon her.
The Oxonians had dinner with Sophie and Adele, saw the show at the Gayety, and took the girls later to a supper club. It was the first of several parties in which Rodrigo's and Sophie's friends took part.
Having, following this adventure, made his apologies to his uncle and aunt for having left the Treasure Hunt flat, the excuse being the necessity of rescuing an automobile party in distress, Rodrigo proceeded to cultivate the further acquaintance of Miss Binner assiduously and without the knowledge of the Newbolds.
He was her constant cavalier. She taught him much—for instance, that a baby-faced blonde can possess a wicked tongue, a sudden and devastating temper and a compensating tenderness that made up for both defects. He was thoroughly infatuated at first. Then his ardor cooled as he realized that Sophie was professing to take his wooing seriously. The idea of contracting an alliance with a future nobleman seemed to appeal to her. Rodrigo did not think of her in that regard at all, and he was alarmed. He began looking for a loophole.
The climax came at a party arranged for after the show in Sophie's Mayfair apartment. Rodrigo had recruited Bill Terhune, Bond and three or four other Oxford friends for the fun. They had accumulated Sophie, Adele and a quartet of their sister coryphees at the theatre after the evening performance and whirled them through the London streets in a fleet of taxicabs. At two o'clock in the morning the party was in full swing. The tinpanny piano crashed out American jazz under the nimble fingers of Sophie. Leslie Bond numbered drumming among his numerous avocations and had brought along the clamorous tools of his hobby. His hysterical efforts on drums, cymbals and cowbells augmented the din and broke both drums.
The revelers sang, danced, drank and made love. Bill Terhune, under the impetus of spirits, was especially boisterous.
There was a sharp knocking upon the door. A corpulent, red-faced Englishman in a frayed and gaudy bathrobe announced that he occupied the apartment below, had been awakened by plaster falling upon his bed and his person, and that "this Donnybrook Fair must cease at once." He was set upon joyously by three burly Oxonians and good-naturedly propelled down the stairs.
Sophie, from the piano, however, did not share their enthusiasm. "It may interest you impetuous lads to know that our killjoy friend is a magistrate and will probably have a couple of bobbies here in five minutes," she warned them. They laughed at her and the party went on.
In twenty minutes there was another knock. Two bobbies, each built like Dempsey, confronted Rodrigo when he opened the door. The policemen entered with that soft, authoritative tread that London police have. One of them laid hands upon Bill Terhune. Bill, former intercollegiate boxing champion, was in a flushed and pugnacious mood. He promptly struck the officer in the face and sent him reeling to the floor.
Immediately the party grew serious. Englishmen respect the police. An American may attack a Broadway policeman, but hitting a London bobby is something else again. The other bobby swung into action with his club. There was a concerted rush for the door. Rodrigo could have easily escaped. But he chose instead to stand by Sophie, who, he knew, was due for trouble as the tenant of the apartment. When the tumult and the shouting died, the room contained Sophie, Rodrigo, one angry bobby with pencil raised over his book, and one still bobby recumbent upon the floor.
"The names now—the right ones," commanded the erect bobby.
"First, don't you think we'd better revive your friend on the floor?" Rodrigo suggested.
When they had brought the fallen one back to life, Rodrigo soothingly and skillfully persuaded the officers to let Sophie alone, to allow him to assume sole responsibility for the trouble. He asked only permission to telephone his uncle, Sir William Newbold. The bobbies generously consented to take him, without Sophie, to jail for the rest of the night, but they declined to allow him the use of the telephone.
The jail cell was cold, cramped and dirty. Rodrigo's cellmate was a hairy navvy recovering from a debauch. Rodrigo had to listen to the fellow's alternate snoring and maudlin murmurings until dawn. When, around ten o'clock in the morning, he did succeed in getting in touch with his uncle, the latter's influence was sufficient to secure his release.
Sir William delivered to his nephew a severe lecture. Then he telephoned the newspaper offices with the idea of having any possible news of his nephew's incarceration suppressed. In this endeavor he was unsuccessful. Two papers contained an account of the arrest, and the more sensational sheet of the two declared that Rodrigo, son of Count Angelo Torriani and nephew of "London's leading merchant-knight, Sir William Newbold," was the fiancé of Sophie Binner and that they were to be married shortly. Rodrigo denied this vehemently to his uncle and was indeed just as angry about it as was Sir William. He saw in it evidence that Sophie had prevaricated to the newspapers, had used his ill fortune as a means of securing notoriety and possibly of binding him publicly to an alliance that did not exist.
He resolved to call upon her and break off any possible entanglement with her.
He confronted her in her apartment in the middle of the next afternoon. She looked especially lovely, her spun-gold tresses in informal disarray and her beauty encased in a silken lounging gown. But Rodrigo was firm. He accused her of exploiting last night's episode in the papers, of giving out news of an engagement that was false. Though she denied this, at first poutingly, then coyly and finally with considerable vehemence not unmixed with vulgarity, Rodrigo insisted. He worked her into a tempest and, at the climax, dramatically walked out of the room and, as he thought, of her life.
During the two years following his graduation from Oxford, Rodrigo had vague ambitions to become a painter and spent considerable time browsing about the galleries of England, Spain, France and his native Italy. He had a workroom fitted up in the palace of the Torrianis and did some original work in oil that was not without merit. But he worked spasmodically. His heart was not in it. He knew good painting too well to believe that his was an outstanding talent, and he lacked ambition therefore to concentrate upon developing it.
In the pursuit of pleasure and the spending of money he was more whole-hearted. He skied and tobogganed at St. Moritz, gambled at Monte Carlo, laughed at Montmartre's attempts to shock him, and flirted in all three places. Upon the invitation of the bobby-assaulting American Rhodes scholar, Terhune by name, now squandering his South Dakotan father's money in New York under the pretence of making a career in architecture, Rodrigo visited America. America, to Rodrigo, was represented by the Broadway theatre and nightclub belt between dusk and dawn. Having in a few weeks exhausted his funds and finding his cabled requests for more greeted with a strange reticence, Rodrigo started for home. Three days out from New York he received the cable announcing to him Count Angelo Torriani's sudden death.
Rodrigo had adored and respected his quiet, high-minded English mother, from whom he had inherited the thin vein of pure gold concealed deep down below the veneer of selfishness and recklessness that coated his character. He loved his father, from whom he drew the superficial and less desirable traits of his personality. Loved him and, without respecting him particularly, treated him as he would an older brother of kindred tastes and faults.
His father's death shook Rodrigo down considerably for a while. It sobered him, made him suddenly aware of his appalling aloneness in a world of many acquaintances but not an understanding relative nor close friend. The secondary calamity of having been, out of a clear sky, left penniless and in debt did not at first impress itself upon him. When the late Count Torriani's will was read, revealing the surprisingly devastated condition of the Torriani finances, and debtors began to present their claims, Rodrigo, now Count Rodrigo faced the realization that his whole mode of life must be changed.
He dismissed the servants, keeping Maria because she refused to go, even after being informed that she would probably have to serve without pay if she stayed. He finally brought himself to talking with an agent at Naples about renting the palace and selling some of the works of art which it contained. The agent was very brisk and business-like. He jumped up and down from his chair and rubbed his hands continually, like an American. Rodrigo was irritated by the vulgarian. He abruptly left the matter and the realtor up in the air and jumped into his car outside. As he swung along the shore of the bay he was in very low spirits, lonesome and as nearly depressed with life as he had ever been. In his preoccupation he paid only subconscious attention to the road ahead and the swift speed at which his car was traveling. He heard suddenly a shriek and flashed his eyes in its direction just in time to avoid killing a girl.
In the flash he saw that the girl was dark, and beautiful in a wildflower-like manner. She was also very dusty from walking. In the torrent of oaths which she poured after him, she furthermore revealed herself as charmingly coarse and unrestrained. Rodrigo cheered up. After the weeks of grief and loneliness, and particularly after the Naples realtor, he found himself wanting ardently to talk to a woman, any woman. He stopped the car and slowly backed up even with the approaching girl. She continued to swear at him. He smiled. When she had gradually quieted, he apologized and offered her a seat beside him. Her angry face relaxed, she pouted, and ended by accepting.
In a few days he had drifted into a fast ripening friendship with Rosa Minardi, who was childlike, was no tax upon his conversational charms or ingenuity, and who liked him very much. Her mother was dead, her father was away in Rome on some mysterious errand. Rodrigo badly needed any sort of companionship, and Rosa filled the need.
Maria's gnarled knuckles beat vigorously upon her young master's door. When her tattoo failed to bring results, she opened the door and walked boldly in. Waddling to the floor-length windows, she flung aside the heavy draperies, drenching the room with sunlight. With a guttural exclamation that was half disgust and half tenderness, she turned toward the dark, recumbent form upon the canopied bed, still undisturbed by her activities. She approached Rodrigo and shook him.
When at last he blinked up at her, she said sharply, "Get up, lazy one. Your American has already breakfasted and is downstairs waiting for you."
Rodrigo's face screwed itself interrogatively, American? Then his drowsy, somewhat fuddled brain remembered Dorning, of Dorning and Son. Rodrigo frowned. Bother Americans. So full of restless energy, such early risers. He looked languidly at the watch upon his wrist. Eleven o'clock. He sat upright in bed and indulged in a prodigious yawn. With a grimace at the ample back of Maria, just disappearing out of the door, he slid out of bed.
Half an hour later, having bathed and breakfasted, Count Rodrigo, looking as fresh and bright of eye as a trained athlete, walked briskly downstairs to find that his guest had apparently not missed him in the least. Dorning was standing in front of the expansive canvas of an oil painting in the great entrance hall of the Torrianis. He had just donned a pair of tortoise-rimmed glasses and was bending over to read the metal plate set in the elaborate frame of the painting. The plate read: "Francesca Torriani, 1527-1562." Dorning realized the likeness between the ruffled-collared, sardonically smiling aristocrat on the canvas and his host, whom he now turned to greet.
"I see you are making the acquaintance of my ancestors," said Rodrigo. "This one, like the others, you will observe, led a short life and, so I understand, a merry one." Rodrigo noted curiously how glasses added at least five years to the age of John Dorning. Having at the instant of their first encounter at the Café Del Mare set the American down as an innocent and probably a prig, Rodrigo had, during their discourse and drinking of the previous night, changed his mind and conceived a mild liking for the man. Dorning was honest, outspoken, and possessed of considerable culture. He was, Rodrigo vaguely felt, the sort of person whom he should cultivate, the type that develops into a staunch and worth-while friend.
"Your ancestor has at least had the good fortune to have been perpetuated by an excellent artist," said Dorning.
"Here is something that will interest you," offered Rodrigo, walking over to a low, ornately carved cabinet set against an adjacent wall. "This is the best example of Early Renaissance cabinet work anywhere around here." Dorning bent a grave, interested head and ran expert fingers over the carving. His host tugged at the doors of the cabinet. As he wrenched them apart, a shelf inside, unbalanced by his effort, slid out upon the floor, spilling its contents as it came. The two young men looked at each other, and Rodrigo grinned sheepishly. Two bundles of letters and a feminine lace fan lay at Dorning's feet.
Rodrigo dropped to his knees and, replacing the souvenirs, closed the cabinet. He rose, dusted his hands, said suavely, "The cabinet was made by Beniti, in Genoa, around 1627. The contents are slightly more modern."
"So I judged," said John Dorning dryly. Then with more enthusiasm, "I only wish I knew Italian antiques as well as you do, Count Torriani—and antiques are my business."
Both turned as Maria came toward them in considerable agitation. "A man named Minardi and a girl are here to see you," she announced in rapid Italian to Rodrigo. "I do not like his looks. I refused to admit him, but he has pushed his way into the outer hall." She indicated the draperies on the other side of the room.
"STOP! DO YOU WANT TO BE ARRESTED? THIS GENTLEMAN IS AN AMERICAN.""STOP! DO YOU WANT TO BE ARRESTED? THIS GENTLEMAN IS AN AMERICAN."
Rodrigo's face clouded. Damn the fellow's persistence. "Tell him to go away. I will not see him. Tell him I shall have him arrested if he continues to bother me," he instructed Maria.
She turned doubtfully. She lacked her usual faith in her sharp tongue in dealing with a calloused fellow like Minardi. She had taken but a step when the draperies parted and Minardi, wearing the same clothes, expression, and carnation as on the previous evening, bulked before them. He had heard Rodrigo's voice talking with Maria, and he was taking no chances. His fat, weak face was trying its best to assume hard, menacing lines. His ill-kept, corpulent body was drawn up as straight as possible with unrighteous indignation. He relaxed for an instant to turn around and drag by the wrist from the other side of the curtain his daughter, Rosa.
Rosa had been brought to the scene with some difficulty. She flashed indignation at her father through swollen eyes. Actually propelled now into the presence of Rodrigo, she glanced half defiantly, half shamefacedly at him, then stood regarding the floor.
Victor Minardi started at once toward Dorning, taking up again with undiminished vigor the torrent of abuse and threat which he had hurled at the American at the Café Del Mare. He was persisting in his belief that Dorning was Count Torriani, the man who was to pay.
Rodrigo stepped between the gesticulating Italian and the uncertain Dorning. "I am Count Torriani. Now, what is it you want?"
Minardi wheeled upon Rodrigo. "So—it was you! Ah. Why did you not say so before, eh?" And he launched into a fresh flood of indignation.
Rodrigo raised a hand to stop him. He perceived that this fellow could not be easily overawed. Minardi wanted money and would probably continue to be a howling nuisance until he got it. Rosa, Rodrigo suspected shrewdly, was in the plot with her father. Certainly she would not otherwise have revealed her love affair with Rodrigo to Minardi and, instead of keeping her rendezvous at the Café Del Mare, allowed the noisy old man to come on a blackmailing expedition in her place. Any tenderness Rodrigo had previously felt for Rose Minardi disappeared. His lips curled as he looked at her dark head, cast down in assumed modesty.
When Minardi had calmed down, Rodrigo snapped, "How much do you want?"
Minardi's anger faded. His eyes lighted up with greed. "Five thousand lira," he replied in a business-like tone.
"You come high," said Rodrigo.
Minardi's hand went to his greasy inside coat pocket, "I have here letters that are worth more than that," he said. "Letters you have written to my Rosa. There are such things as breach of promise suits. The newspapers would like them, eh? The Torrianis are not popular at Naples, eh?"
In spite of himself, Rodrigo winced a little. This fat, futile old reprobate began to assume the proportions of a real danger. Rodrigo essayed frankness. "You know so much about the Torrianis," suggested he, "you perhaps know that I have not five thousand liras at the moment."
Minardi shrugged his stooped shoulders. "Even if that is true, you can get them," he said. And he looked significantly at John Dorning, an interested and somewhat disgusted spectator at the scene.
Rodrigo's slim fingers were drumming nervously upon the Beniti cabinet which he had just been displaying to his guest. In their nervous course over the top of the cabinet the finger points met the smooth surface of an elaborately wrought silver vase standing there. Rodrigo looked down. He hesitated an instant, then caught up the vase in his hand.
"This was made by the great Cellini himself," he remarked to Minardi. "It is worth at least twice the amount you are blackmailing me for. You can easily dispose of it in Naples. I do not, of course, admit any of your silly accusations. However, take this vase—and go at once."
He held the exquisitely formed metal toward Minardi. John Dorning's eyes made a hasty appraisal of it. He half opened his lips to protest against this careless disposal of the little silver masterpiece. But Minardi, hardly looking at it, snarled, "No. I want money."
Dorning said at once to Rodrigo, "Give him money then. I will buy the vase. I'll give you twice what he wants—ten thousand liras—and make a handsome profit if I ever want to dispose of it." He took out his purse.
Rodrigo regarded his guest with puzzled surprise. "I don't want you to do this for me, Dorning. I——"
"Please believe me, it is merely a matter of business," Dorning cut in quietly. "I am in Italy for the purpose of picking up just such bargains." He counted out the money and offered it to Rodrigo. The young Italian hesitated an instant, then took the proffered notes, counted them and started to hand half to Minardi.
"You want something for your money, don't you?" Dorning interjected. "Your letters?"
"Naturally," replied Rodrigo, flushing a little. He was not used to being prompted. As he took the packet of note-paper from Minardi's greasy hands he now made an over-elaborate show of checking them up. "They are all here," he decided, speaking curtly and more to Dorning than to Rosa's papa. To the latter he continued even more curtly, "Now get out. If I see you about here again I will turn you over to the police."
Minardi bowed impudently. He made a move to seize the silent Rosa's hand, but she eluded him. Suddenly she opened shrill soprano abuse of her father. "I hope you're satisfied now!" she cried. "You have humiliated me, your daughter. You've sold my honest love for money, made me appear a low, scheming woman. I hate you." With a swift movement she slipped over to Rodrigo, who stood with arms folded, regarding her with a wry smile.
"Please tell me you do not think I plotted this with him," she pleaded, her dark, warm face quite near to his. "It is not for money I love you. I did not come to the café last night, because I was angry with you for telling me I am bad tempered. I cried all last night over that, Rodrigo. But I am not angry at you now. I am angry only at Papa." Her soft arms attempted to steal around Rodrigo's neck. "Tell me that you still love me," she begged in a low, husky voice.
Still he stood rigid. He shot an apologetic smile at Dorning. Even now he felt the attraction of this creature of primitive emotions, though he suspected she was acting.
"But you are bad tempered, Rosa," he jibed, disengaging her arms. "And I think you are somewhat of a liar besides."
She fairly flung herself away from him at that, standing with heaving bosom and flashing eyes. She was still cursing him when her father laid violent hands upon her and led her out of the house.
Rodrigo shrugged his shoulders and lit a cigarette. "A charming creature," he remarked flippantly to Dorning. Nevertheless Rodrigo was rather ashamed of the scene the two Minardis had made in front of the American. Somehow Dorning had already assumed an importance to him much more than that of a casual and congenial guest. It was not that Dorning had stepped into an embarrassing situation with ten thousand liras. It was the spirit that had prompted the American's action. Rodrigo sensed a quiet strength in the man that he himself somehow lacked, a strength that in the troublous future confronting him he would like to have near him.
"The trouble with women," Rodrigo remarked, "is that they cannot keep love in its proper place. It soon ceases to be a game with them and becomes a mad scramble to possess a man. Then comes jealousy, bad temper, remorse, and complications such as you have just seen."
"'Love is to man a thing apart; to woman their whole being,'" Dorning quoted. He did not think his host had acquitted himself with especial credit in the "complications." There was a tawdriness about the Minardis and the scene they had created unbecoming to a man who owned original Cellinis and other treasures. Art, to Dorning, was about all there was in life. The Rosas were superficial annoyances that had never yet entered into his own career, though he was quite aware that they existed in the careers of most other men. He had been immediately attracted to his host by their mutual interest in art. The charm of the man, his good looks, his facile tongue, his wit and deftness in conversation had added to the attraction. Why should such a man love such a common creature as Rosa Minardi and consent to be blackmailed by her father? Dorning resolved to forget Rosa and turned the conversation to tapestries.
But Rodrigo's thoughts were not entirely diverted from "complications." "There is an amusing tradition about those tapestries," he said. "You will observe that the ones near the window seat are identical with those at the door leading into the outer hall. Well, my worthy ancestor whose portrait you have praised, Francesca Torriani, once found their similarity his undoing. It seems that he was entertaining a very lovely married lady in this room, a Countess. Her husband, the Count, followed her to the rendezvous. Suddenly in the middle of my ancestor's love-making, the Countess caught sight of her husband outside. 'Quick,' she cried, 'where can I hide?' Francesca thrust her behind the tapestry by the door.
"The Count entered, very angry and his hand upon his sword hilt. 'Where is my wife? I saw her come here,' he bellowed. Francesca swore like a gentleman that the lady was not present. The Count insisted and started searching. His eye caught the outline of a lady's foot showing beneath the tapestry. With a loud cry of rage he tore the tapestry to one side and revealed not his Countess but quite another lady! Another of Francesca's lady friends had sought shelter when the Countess entered, behind the tapestries by the window seat. All might have been well had not the Countess, hearing from her hiding-place a woman's voice, been assailed by jealousy and, casting discretion to the winds, come forth breathing fire and brimstone."
"What happened then?" asked Dorning smiling, amused in spite of himself.
"There was a terrific four-handed clash. Poor Francesca was half mad with anxiety. The Count challenged him to a duel. In the fight, Francesca, who, unlike the rest of the Torrianis, was no swordsman, was killed."
"And quite a proper climax to the adventure it was," John Dorning declared soberly.
"Proper—why!" Rodrigo asked. "Because Francesca had been too stupid to learn swordsmanship?"
"No—because of his interest in a lady who belonged to another."
"The lady should not have taken Francesca's love so seriously as to have become jealous. When will women understand that when they take our admiration seriously they kill it?"
"Not at all," Dorning returned stoutly. "That is exactly the wrong attitude. I do not understand it in you—you who are so intelligent and sensible about other things. There are so many other things for you to interest yourself in than in these petty love affairs."
Rodrigo straightened. He did not relish criticism. In the next instant, realizing that Dorning was honest in his questioning and rather pleased that he had aroused his quiet guest to such a pitch, he relaxed and asked calmly, "What other interests do you recommend for a reckless and extravagant gentleman, like myself, who now finds himself penniless and equipped for nothing in the world but for amusing the ladies and for being amused by them?"
"If you will pardon me—are you really in straightened circumstances?"
"Yes. I am in debt. Economy was not one of my father's virtues, nor did he take the trouble to develop it in me." Rodrigo, fearing to be misunderstood, added, "Not that I am in need of a loan, you understand. You have done quite enough for me, and I am grateful."
"What are you thinking of doing then?"
"I can either marry the first single rich lady or widow who will have me, or I can sell or rent this place and its contents."
"You would do neither of those two foolish things."
"Why not?" Rodrigo was curious. He was secretly rather pleased at the personal turn the conversation had taken, for, with all his worldliness and experience along romantic lines, it seemed that Dorning's common sense might be valuable in considering the rather dismaying future.
"Have you ever considered entering trade?" Dorning asked tentatively.
"My father was in trade. There is nothing unpleasant about it to me. What sort of trade?"
Thus encouraged, John Dorning revealed what was in his mind. "We—Dorning and Son," he explained, "have gone in recently, to a very extensive degree, for Italian antiques. My mission over here is for the purpose of adding to our stock. Also, if possible, to acquire a man to manage that department of our business, someone who is an expert in that line and who at the same time is fitted to deal with our rather exclusive clientele. It occurs to me that you might be that man, if you would care to consider it."
Rodrigo did not reply at once. He took three or four steps in silence, thoughtfully, away from Dorning. Go to America! Enter business! He recalled the deprecatory manner in which his father had always talked about business and the great relief it had been for the elder Torriani to leave the Indian trade and settle down at last to be a gentleman again. And he was very much like his father in so many ways. The business of John Dorning, to be sure, was art, something he, Rodrigo, loved. It was not like the mad commercial scramble of ordinary trade. There was nothing commercial about Dorning. Something within Rodrigo said "Go." Something in Dorning's offer was lifting off his mind the almost physical weight that oppressed him every time he considered the future.
"I will accept your offer and return with you to America," Rodrigo said with quiet suddenness.
John Dorning started. He had not suspected such a quick and decisive answer. "Fine," he said. "Can you arrange your affairs to sail with me next week on the Italia?"
Rodrigo was sure that he could. Now that he was committed to the plunge, he was positively gay about it. The two young men spent the rest of the day talking the arrangements over. In the afternoon they journeyed in to Naples in Rodrigo's car and entered an agreement with the fussy Italian real estate agent to rent the palace of the Torrianis to the family of a young American author who had just made a fortune out of a best-selling novel and wished to write its sequel along the romantic shore of the Bay of Naples.
The great floating hotel glided steadily ahead over the smooth, black waters of the Mediterranean. Somewhere within her hull, boiler fires were roaring and a labyrinth of machinery was driving furiously, but only a slight, muffled throb reached the ears of the lone passenger standing at the rail directly under the bridge. Over his head he could hear the regular tread of the watch officer as he paced his monotonous round. In front of him was the dark immensity of the night, broken only when he lowered his eyes to take in the lights from the port-holes and the jagged streaks of phosphorescence streaming back from the bow as it cut the water.
Rodrigo was quite happy. His ripening friendship with Dorning, the new clean life into which every minute of the ship's progress was carrying him, the cool, damp darkness that surrounded him, added to his content. He snapped his cigarette into the Mediterranean and with a peaceful sigh walked into the crowded, brilliantly lighted saloon in search of his friend.
The waiter was standing expectantly at Dorning's table, while Dorning, menu card in hand, was looking about for Rodrigo. Another man sat at the table with the American, a small, nervous, middle-aged man, who was also fingering a menu.
"I feared you had changed your mind and leaped overboard or something," Dorning smiled as Rodrigo approached. "I want you to meet Mr. Mark Rosner, Rodrigo. Mr. Rosner—Count Torriani." Rodrigo bowed and slid into his place at the table.
"Mr. Rosner is an old friend of my father's," Dorning explained. "We met by chance at the door of the saloon."
Rosner elaborated upon the explanation in a rapid, clipped voice. "I worked for Dorning and Son for a long time, Count Torriani. I left them five years ago to open a shop of my own in London. I did rather well, but you know how it is—once an American, always an American. There is no town in the world like New York. I sold out my place in London six months ago. Since then I have been traveling in Italy acquiring a stock, and I am on my way back to New York to go into business there."
He directed his conversation toward Rodrigo, evidently awed a bit by the young Italian's title and reserved manner and anxious to make an impression. Mark Rosner was a rare Jewish type, an impractical æsthete who disliked business life intensely but who nevertheless was consumed by the urge to make money. The struggle had whitened his mop of unruly hair prematurely, stooped his fat shoulders, and worn his nerves to ragged edges. The truth was that his London venture had been a failure and his new stock had been bought in Italy on borrowed capital. His delight at meeting John Dorning again had been partly caused by genuine pleasure at coming upon the son of a man he had always liked and admired and partly by the thought that he might derive aid later from the Dornings in getting started in New York.
"Count Torriani is to become associated with us in New York," Dorning remarked when the waiter had departed with the three orders. Dorning, now that Rodrigo had arrived, would rather the third party were not present. He remembered Rosner as a valuable employee, but as one who was always timid in taking responsibility and evasive and whining when things went badly. However, he was too kind-hearted to snub the fellow.
Rosner replied in his jerky voice, "Really? You couldn't join a concern with a finer reputation, Count Torriani. Dorning and Son are the leaders in their line in New York, as you probably know. Sometimes I wish I had never left your father, John." Dorning secretly smiled at Rosner's sudden familiarity. "But you know how it is—there is a certain satisfaction in being on your own, in spite of the risk involved."
He went on to relate in considerable detail the difficulties that had beset his venture in London. In the midst of his recital the food arrived. Rodrigo and John Dorning, who were hungry and bored, fell to at once and heard only snatches of the remainder of Rosner's querulous discourse. Englishmen of the art world, according to Rosner, were prejudiced against Americans in the same line of business, particularly Americans of Semitic extraction. He gave instances of alleged discriminations against him.
"I don't suppose, though, that it's much different in New York," Rosner admitted. "I remember many of the old-line concerns were against foreigners there too, and I don't suppose it has changed much. I recall how Henry Madison opposed your father's taking on that Italian sculptor, Rinaldi, and how pleased he was when the chap fell down and had to be let out. You were there then, weren't you, John?"
John did not look over-pleased. "Rinaldi was not the man for the job," he said with a frown. "My father was carried away with his enthusiasm for the man's work in clay. Rinaldi was no good out of his studio, and Madison quickly recognized it. The fact that Rinaldi was a foreigner had nothing to do with the matter."
Rodrigo now listened with interest for the first time since he had sat down at the table. He foresaw that his career with Dorning and Son might not prove as unruffled as he had anticipated. This did not greatly annoy him. He had little of the eccentric artistic temperament, and there was enough of the merchant blood in him to enable him to adapt himself to office work. At least, he hoped so. If obstacles arose, he would overcome them.
"Who is Mr. Madison?" Rodrigo asked politely.
"He is the manager of our establishment," John explained. "There is no cause for alarm, Rodrigo. He is the most honest, fairest person alive."
Rosner, glancing furtively from one of his tablemates to the other, sensed that he had rather put his foot into it. Why had he not remembered that Count Torriani was a foreigner? He flushed with embarrassment and, to change the subject, asked John, "Is your father still active in the business?"
Dorning's sensitive face clouded. He answered, "No, my father has not been in very good health for the past year or so. He is staying at our place at Greenwich and only gets down to the office once or twice a month."
"Then you have charge?"
"Yes—with the able assistance of Madison and the rest of our staff. It isn't a very difficult job, as you can imagine. The long-standing reputation of Dorning and Son and the organization my father built up don't leave a very great deal for the head of the concern to do."
"All the same, it's quite a responsibility for a young fellow only a few years out of college, John, and I congratulate you." What there was of shrewdness in Mark Rosner now showed in his dark, ineffective eyes. Young Dorning was evidently kind-hearted, and, of necessity, inexperienced. An appeal to him for assistance by an old employee of his father's would probably meet with a favorable response.