CHAPTER XXIX.
DEFIANCE, NOT DEFENSE.
As Madam Guiscardini’s servants stood gaping in amazement and affright at the scene before them, Frank Amberley felt he had need to exercise all the coolness and address left him. He had no desire, nor did he believe that the mistress of the house in her more sober moments could wish, that the police should be called in as assistants.
“Stand back!” he thundered, in authoritative tones to the scared domestics, at the same time leveling the pistol at them. “Heaven forbid that I should take the life of any one here, but I will shoot the first who dares to lay a finger on me!”
The women squeaked, the men huddled back on one another. None cared to risk the safety of limbs in the service of a mistress for whom not one in the house cared a doit.
“Madam Guiscardini knows me,” the young lawyer continued. “She knows where to find me, if I am wanted. She has told you a falsehood. Let me go. Stand back, all of you.”
Her first burst of frenzied passion exhausted, Lucia Guiscardini rapidly reviewed her position. A sullen despair succeeded her fury. Certainly, it would not be to her interest that the police should be called. This desperate man would probably raise a counter-charge against her, and there would be an investigation. As he was a friend of Paul Desfrayne’s, he must inevitably within a few hours learn the damning fact of the death of the man Gilardoni.
“They will set people to work,” she said to herself; “and they will find out that I was with him yesterday. Not the cleverest chemist on earth will be able to trace the poison, but they may trap me, for all that.”
This idea raced through her brain like lightning, so that she seemed only to have time to unlink her armsfrom about Frank Amberley, place her hands to her forehead as if in horror, and then fall back in an admirably simulated swoon.
“Stand aside, and let me pass,” again exclaimed Frank Amberley, finding himself thus released.
“Seize him! Don’t let him go!” faintly cried one or two in the rear of the group in the doorway.
“Attend to your mistress, and leave my way free,” cried Frank Amberley, still holding the deadly weapon leveled menacingly. He was as ignorant as any one there whether the second chamber was loaded or not, but that signified little, as he had not the most remote intention of hurting as much as a fly.
With a quick, threatening step and determined air, he strode toward the door.
Some of the domestics fled precipitately up-stairs, others crawled back by another door leading into the two drawing-rooms. A whispered buzz ran round, but no one raised a hand to stay the supposed assailant of the mistress of the house.
Pistol in hand, he walked between the two startled groups, steadily, with perfect sang-froid. At the top of the stairs he turned, and went down step by step, backward, lest he should be surprised and overpowered. No one stirred, however, though some of the women peered over the balustrade. One of the housemaids ran and raised Madam Guiscardini, who still remained in her convenient swoon, while the other flew to get some water from a side table.
Arrived in the hall, Frank Amberley opened the door, laid the pistol on the hall table, and went out.
“Thank Heaven, so far!” he exclaimed, aloud, as he found himself at liberty in the open air.
He marveled how they had let him depart, and expected to see them rushing after him, hallooing at the top of their voices.
A few rapid strides brought him to the corner. He had it in his heart to take to his heels, but did not yield to the temptation. His pulses were throbbing painfully, and he knew that much was yet to come, but he contrived to maintain his composure.
With joy he saw a slowly crawling hansom coming toward him. The driver hailed him, and he threw himself into the vehicle with a sense of relief indescribable.
“Alderman’s Lane, city,” he cried.
It seemed scarcely credible that he should have succeeded in so readily discovering the inestimable treasure which had seemed utterly beyond reach.
On reaching his destination, the young lawyer ran lightly up the steps, and passed into the office. As it happened, Mr. Willis Joyner was there, reading a note which had just come for him. He looked up, and cried out as if in surprise:
“Hello, Amberley, is that you? What have you been up to—practising a little mild burglary, eh?”
“A cabman gave you an Italian register just now, did he not?” anxiously inquired Frank.
“He did. I put it in my safe.”
Arrived in the chamber devoted to the use of the cheerful and urbane Mr. Willis Joyner, Frank seized on the volume the instant it was produced from the ponderous iron safe. In a very short investigation—for he was an accomplished master of the Italian language—he lighted on the register which was to set Paul Desfrayne at liberty.
“By the way,” Mr. Willis remarked, “a telegram arrived for you directly after you left this morning. I had forgotten.”
“A telegram? Did an Italian call for me?”
“Not that I know of.”
Frank Amberley tore open the envelope of the telegram.
“Great heavens!” he ejaculated, when he had read the few terrible lines of the despatch.
They ran thus:
“On my return last night, I found Leonardo Gilardoni lying dead in my rooms. I fear he has met with foul play. On my way, I believe I saw Madam G. walking at a rapid pace toward the station. I pursued; but when I reached the station, I found the last train had just started for London. I cannot help associating the fact ofher presence here with the death of my poor servant. Pray Heaven I may be in error in thinking so! Inquest this afternoon.”
“On my return last night, I found Leonardo Gilardoni lying dead in my rooms. I fear he has met with foul play. On my way, I believe I saw Madam G. walking at a rapid pace toward the station. I pursued; but when I reached the station, I found the last train had just started for London. I cannot help associating the fact ofher presence here with the death of my poor servant. Pray Heaven I may be in error in thinking so! Inquest this afternoon.”
Agitated by the events of the morning, Frank Amberley was inexpressibly shocked by this fatal intelligence. Dropping the paper from his trembling fingers, he sank into a chair, as if unable to speak.
Mr. Willis Joyner hastily poured out some wine, which he offered to Frank, and stood by with the tender sympathy of some gentle-hearted woman.
Every one in the place loved Frank Amberley, and none probably more than the gay, superficially selfish Willis Joyner. He saw that some very unusual circumstances had upset the general tranquillity of the young man; and, though he could not form the most distant guess as to the nature of the events which had occurred, he felt grieved.
In a few minutes, Frank Amberley recovered his self-possession, and then he gave Mr. Willis Joyner a brief, rapid outline of the strange story, translating the register, and showing him the telegram.
The register was transferred to the iron safe in Frank Amberley’s room, and he at once wrote a full account of the finding of the prize, which he sent off to Paul Desfrayne by telegraph. He did not allude to Paul’s mention of encountering Lucia Guiscardini on the road to the station, for he felt it would not be safe to do so, but briefly said how shocked he had been by the intelligence that poor Gilardoni was dead.
Lucia Guiscardini made no sign. She had played a desperate game, and the numbers had turned up against her. Like most women who, innocent or guilty, find themselves in difficulties, her chief idea was to seek safety in flight. She dared not face Paul Desfrayne, for she could expect no mercy at his hands. Bitterly did she curse the folly, the cowardice, that had hindered her from destroying the evidence of her marriage with Gilardoni. Deeply now did she deplore having run the terrible risk of killing her real husband.
On the departure of Frank Amberley, she had sullenlycleared the room of her attendants, and then sat down to think—or to try if it were possible to collect her scattered wits.
Disgrace, death, were before her. But which way to turn?—whither fly? The idea of destroying herself occurred to her disordered brain, but then she thoughtthatresource would do when all else failed. Money she had in plenty. Why should she give up this fair and alluring earth, if safety could be purchased?
“Even if they fix this marriage on me,” she reflected, “and thus ruin my hopes of becoming a wealthy princess, they may not be able to discover that I had aught to do with the death of Gilardoni. How could they? Even if they find out I was in the neighborhood, who is to prove that, granting he did not die a natural death, he did not kill himself? The excitement of a painful interview might even bring on heart-disease. Twenty different reasons might explain and reconcile the facts of my being there with my perfect innocence of any complicity in his tragical fate. Shall I defy them all, and remain, or fly?”
She paced to and fro distractedly.
“I will remain here,” she at last defiantly decided. “If they accuse me of stealing the book, I will boldly declare that those three men have entered into a plot for extorting money from me—thathe, Gilardoni, was the one who took it away, and that his lawyer pretended to find it here. No one saw him take it, though he threw it out of the window. I will swear he brought it hither, and offered to sell it to me; and tried to bully me with a threat of exposure as being the wife of that low-born peasant. I will risk staying. Let them do their worst—I think I can defy them. His highness will hasten to see me to-night, when he finds I am not at the opera: no doubt he will urge me, as he has so often done, to marry him, and I shall yield to his entreaties. I will no longer keep up my pretense of coyness and reluctance, but will use my influence over him to hurry on the marriage. Once his consort I am safe.”