CHAPTER XXVIII.
THE INLAID CABINET.
The sight of any and every stranger who spoke to or even looked at Lucia must henceforth inevitably cause her a thrill of fear.
She had never seen this handsome young man with the dark, grave, penetrating eyes before, to her knowledge; yet he looked at her as if he would read her very soul.
Frank, the instant the door opened, had bounded from his cab, and was waiting for the signora to issue forth. He bowed profoundly.
“Madam Guiscardini, I believe?” he said.
He had recognized her at the first glance, having frequently seen her at the opera, both in London and in Paris, and being furthermore made familiar with her strikingly marked features and imperial figure by the innumerable photographs issued by London and Parisian firms.
It was impossible for madam to deny her own identity. Frank noticed that she grew pale—perceptibly so, and that the jeweled fingers of her ungloved hand twitched nervously.
“My name is Guiscardini,” she replied, after a slight hesitation, and speaking in frigid accents.
“May I beg the favor of a few moments’ private conversation with you, madam?” asked Frank Amberley. “My business is of the utmost importance, or I should not delay you just as you are going out.”
“Certainly not,” angrily replied the cantatrice, her lips trembling from mingled rage and fear. She imagined that perhaps this gentlemanly fellow, with the handsome face and urbane manners, might be a detective in disguise. “It is impossible, my time is not my own, and I cannot grant you even five minutes.”
She glanced at the jeweled watch that hung at herwaist amid a coruscation of enameled lockets and miscellaneous toys and trinkets.
“I am sorry to be so pressing, madam, but if you will give me ten minutes—I promise to go by the dial of your own watch—I will not trespass longer.”
He knew well that the business he came on could not be disposed of in that time, but relied on the hope that she would, if persuaded to enter on it, voluntarily extend the time.
“Who are you, and what do you want?” demanded Madam Guiscardini sharply, looking keenly at him.
“My name, madam, is Amberley—I have the honor to belong to the firm of Messrs. Salmon, Joyner & Joyner, who are solicitors.”
“What do you want? I will not hear you, sir! Let me pass, sir. You are rude and unmannerly not to take a reasonable refusal. Let me pass, sir, I say—I insist!”
She tried to push by him, in order to get to her brougham, the door of which was held open by the powdered lackey who had been sitting beside the coachman.
Frank Amberley laid a firm, detaining grip on her wrist as she passed by.
“Madam Guiscardini,” he whispered in her ear, “you would consult your own interest in consenting to hear me. I come from Captain Paul Desfrayne, and I wish to ask you a few questions about Leonardo Gilardoni.”
This time the signora could not restrain the scream that rose to her lips. She stared wildly about her, and then at the enemy who had so suddenly sprung up before her.
The idea that he was a detective became almost a certainty. He had come to tax her with her double crime. She must be cool and quiet, she thought the next moment, and strive not to betray herself.
Whatever he had to say, however, must not be said before these prying, gossiping menials. With surprising quickness, she rallied her forces, resisted the inclination to swoon, and without answering her strange visitor, turned back to Finette.
“Put on your bonnet, girl, quick as lightning, and go to the opera-house,” she said to her maid. “Tell Mr.Mervyn that I was on my way to him, but was detained at the last moment, and that I shall not be able to sing to-night. Take this medical certificate with you.”
Finette took the paper, and flew up-stairs, glad of the chance of a pleasant drive, yet vexed that she could not stay to find out the mystery that was going on.
Madam Guiscardini turned to Frank Amberley.
“Follow me,” she said, in harsh accents.
She glided up to the drawing-room, feeling at every step as if her knees must yield under her. The young lawyer silently followed her, wondering at the success which had attended his effort to obtain an interview with her.
“Now, sir, may I ask the nature of your business with me?” madam said, when she had closed the door, across which she pulled the silken portière to deaden the sounds from within, for she distrusted all her servants. She advanced to the windows, as the point farthest away from the reach of eavesdroppers, but neither seated herself nor asked her visitor to sit down.
“You may imagine that I have nothing very agreeable to say, judging by the quarter from which I come,” said Frank Amberley.
“You say you come from Captain Desfrayne? What business can you have to transact between Captain Desfrayne and myself?” asked the signora, with an affectation of surprise and curiosity.
“You do not mention the other name.”
“What other name?”
“The name of Leonardo Gilardoni—of your husband, madam.”
The wretched woman’s hand closed on the slender inlaid back of a chair for support. Every vestige of color faded from her face, and her eyes looked haggard for a moment.
“I don’t know whom you mean,” she whispered, rather than said.
“That is a falsehood, madam.”
“Why should you say that? By what right or license do you come within my house to harass—to torture me?”
Frank Amberley was almost amazed by the singulareffect his few preparatory words seemed to have, and could not reasonably account for it. This woman’s demeanor was entirely different from what Paul Desfrayne had yesterday prognosticated it would be. Why should she evidence this fear—this shrinking? He felt there must be some further mystery to solve, some new secret to unravel. Had he known the contents of the telegram then waiting for him in Alderman’s Lane, he would have had a clue. As it was, he was mystified.
Had Lucia Guiscardini, on the other hand, known the simple nature of his errand, she would have entirely controlled herself. But she already in fancy could imagine his arresting grip on her shoulder, and the odd query rose in her mind: “Will he handcuff me?”
“By what right do I come?” Frank Amberley slowly repeated, watching every change and variation in her agitated face. “By the right of justice.”
“Justice? I do not understand you.”
“Oh! yes, you do. I may as well inform you that Captain Desfrayne, the man whom you so basely, so ungratefully entrapped into an illegal marriage—the man whose life you have blighted, whose happiness you have ruined——”
“Well? Be brief, I beg of you, for, as I told you at first, my time is limited, and most precious,” interrupted Madam Guiscardini.
This circumlocution, however, gave her a ray of hope that her first fear was groundless.
“Captain Desfrayne has told me the whole miserable story of infamous deception.”
“What story?”
“Come, madam, your affectation of ignorance is useless, and only a waste of time. You cannot deny that while you hold Captain Desfrayne in legal bondage, you are in reality the wife, by a prior marriage, of a man who is in his service—one Leonardo Gilardoni.”
The words “you are” were like the sound of a trumpet to the unhappy woman. It was palpable that this man did not yet know of Gilardoni’s death. The strain upon her nerves had been so fearful that she gave way theinstant the relaxation came. She fell back on the chair by which she stood, in violent hysterics.
Amazed by such apparently singular behavior, Frank Amberley stood by, partly alarmed, partly resolved not to summon assistance if he could help it, for he was determined to follow up the advantage he seemed to have gained.
Presently Lucia Guiscardini recovered her self-command. She was glad none of the servants had been called, though she would have welcomed the interruption their presence would have caused.
“You are doubtless surprised, sir, that I should be thus overcome,” she said. “But I am very unwell. I was on my way to the theater to tell the director I could not appear, in consequence of sudden illness. My nerves are overstrained. The subject of my marriage with the gentleman you name is a distressing one to me, and one upon which I cannot enter without painful emotion. Of the other person about whom you spoke I know nothing. I have never heard his name. The person I have the misfortune to call husband has evidently told you a false story. He has treated me with meanness and cruelty, but I have been generous enough not to betray him. Why does he send you to me?”
“Because he thought you might listen to me where you would only laugh in his face.”
“What does he want of me? Let him come himself. At this moment, I wish to see him. I have something of paramount importance to tell him.”
“You may treat me as his nearest friend and confidant in this matter,” said the young man quietly. “What you would say to him, you can say to me.”
“What guarantee have I that you really come from him?” demanded the signora.
“Why should I raise a fiction of such a kind? What good could I do myself or others by deceiving you?”
“I neither know nor care. With him I will treat—with no other.”
“I will tell him so. But you had better hear what I have to say on the part of Captain Desfrayne. Unfortunately,we cannot prove your marriage with this Gilardoni. Pray, madam, may I ask you one question?”
“Speak.”
“How is it that if, as you declare, you have never until this day heard of Leonardo Gilardoni, his name causes you to shudder violently?”
“That is your fancy, sir. I have a slight attack of ague, from which I shiver every now and then,” replied Madam Guiscardini icily.
“I do not believe you, Madam Guiscardini; but, as I was saying, we cannot prove your first marriage, because you have stolen the original register, and therefore——”
The young woman started from her seat in a kind of frenzy. A moment’s reflection, however, caused her to sink back.
“Mr. Amberley,” she said, very calmly, looking him straight in the face with an expression of candor on her own lovely visage, “every one has, I believe, a motive for what they do. You say you come hither to-day in the name of justice. What your object may further be I do not know, as you have not as yet deigned to enlighten me upon the precise nature of the demand you apparently intend making upon me. I am convinced that you, and it may be Captain Desfrayne, are deceived by the concocted story of a man who desires to extort money. I am supposed to be rich—I do not deny that I have a great deal of money: I am therefore regarded as a person to be preyed upon.
“Captain Desfrayne may be actuated by mean and cruel objects in pursuing me, whom he has always treated in so abominable a manner—his jealousy, his ill conduct, obliged me unwillingly to leave him, for I desired to do my duty as a wife, though I did not love him. You and he have, you say, listened to a story told by some man who asserts that—that—that I was—that I was married to him. Plainly, why do you and Captain Desfrayne lend yourselves to this infamous conspiracy? I do not intend to tamely submit to robbery and insult, I can assure you. Who is this man?”
“He is Captain Desfrayne’s valet,” said Frank Amberley,who had not attempted even once to interrupt the long harangue with which he had been favored.
“As I should have imagined,” said Madam Guiscardini, withering scorn in her look and voice, a disdainful smile on her lips. “This man, whom the world supposes to be a gentleman, because he wears the uniform of an officer in the service of the King of England, puts his servant forward to insult and harass me—will, perhaps, urge him to attack me for money. You come to ask me—what?”
Frank Amberley, who had remained standing from the moment he entered the room until now, slightly stooped, and, leaning forward, gazed intently into the signora’s great, bold black eyes.
For some instants she bore this searching look; then her guilty eyes sank, while the color flowed back to her pale face. Her hands clenched with suppressed fury, and it was with difficulty she refrained from giving way to a burst of rage. But she feared she might betray herself by a word inadvertently spoken, and so remained silent.
“You know, Madam Guiscardini, that what I have asserted is perfectly true,” said the young man sternly. “You, the wife of the Italian, Leonardo Gilardoni, trapped my client into a marriage with you, believing yourself safe because you had abstracted the evidence of your first marriage. That evidence you did not dare to destroy—it still exists.”
The signora raised her eyes, and looked at him in affright.
“What evidence?” she asked.
“The written register in the book belonging to the chapel in which your brother married you to Gilardoni.”
“This is infamous. What do you hope by bullying me in this manner?” exclaimed Madam Guiscardini.
“You asked what I wanted—why I had come. I will tell you: Before we seek for your brother, the priest—the Padre Josef—I wish to know what you have done with the registry-book?”
His keenly practised eye caught a swift glance at hers, gleaming like an instantaneous flash.
With a strange misgiving that she was entirely betrayed—thatpossibly Finette or some other servant had watched her, unseen, and reported her secret doings—she glanced for a second at a tall cabinet standing in a corner of the room, near the pianoforte—a curious old piece of eighteenth-century furniture, inlaid with paintings on enamel.
Frank Amberley lowered his gaze, and appeared simply to wait for an answer.
“They have, then, sent you upon this ridiculous errand?” said the signora. “It is a fool’s message, undertaken by a simpleton.”
“You say this story has been hatched up by designing persons, with a view to extort money——”
“Or by a pitiful coward who desires to harass and torment me,” interrupted the young woman.
“Aye. As you will. I asked you where this book is concealed. I know you have not destroyed it. You had doubtless your own motives for preserving such a damning piece of evidence against yourself——”
“I foresee that I shall be obliged to dismiss you from the house, sir,” again interrupted Madam Guiscardini, rising, concentrated fury blazing in her eyes. “You shall not continue to annoy and insult me under my own roof.”
“Pardon me, madam. I do not wish to be other than courteous in conducting this unpleasant affair. My own interest in it is less than nothing. Did I consult my own wishes, I should not lift a finger to coerce you. Bear with me for a few moments longer. I said, I asked you where this registry-book is hidden away. The question was put merely to try you.”
“Oh, indeed! Monsieur grows more and more incomprehensible. May I hope that this preposterous little farce is nearly played out?”
“Very nearly, madam. The terrible drama that has been performed is also, I believe, almost at an end. Iknowwhere that parchment-bound volume is.”
“Indeed! Monsieur is, then, a magician—a juggler? This begins to be amusing. I should like to see this wonderful tome. But I should hope that your friends and clients and coconspirators have not been so daring as toforge written evidence against me? That would be too terrible, though I do not fear the worst they can do.”
“The volume is near at hand,” pursued Frank, his eyes never leaving her face for a second. As yet, every shot had told with fatal effect.
“Near at hand,” repeated the unhappy young woman mechanically. She felt certain now that she had been betrayed, and her suspicions fell on Finette, the French maid, whom she had always hated and mistrusted.
“Close at hand,” the lawyer said slowly, approaching a step toward her. “It lies in this house.”
“Do you mean to say that they have dared to place their forged papers within my own dwelling?” demanded Lucia Guiscardini, twisting and twining her fingers in and out of one another.
But she only spoke thus to delay the last fatal moment. Not knowing that he was proceeding chiefly upon guesswork, guided by that one swift gleam from her own eyes, she made sure he had certain information.
Finette had seen her open the cabinet, she thought, and had seen her examine the suspicious-looking volume. One hope remained: the girl might not know the secret of the spring opening the inner compartment where the book lay crouching amid laces and filmy handkerchiefs, placed there to deceive any casual eye that might happen to light upon the nook so cunningly devised.
“You cannot deny that the book is in this house—that you carry it about with you—that——”
“What?”
“That it is in this very room.”
“What more, sir? My patience, I warn you, is well-nigh exhausted. Beware, sir—beware! My temper is not of the most angelic mold, and I am very weary of this folly.”
“Madam Guiscardini, I ask you plainly, is not that stolen book in yonder cabinet?” demanded the young lawyer.
It was his last throw, and he watched the result with a keen and eager gaze.
The signora made one step, with an affrighted look, as if to take flight. Then she paused, and drew two orthree deep, sobbing breaths, like some wild animal pressed very close by the hunters.
“You look like a gentleman,” she cried, after making some ineffectual efforts to speak; “and you behave like a footpad. I know nothing of the book you rave about. I have never heard of the man whose name you have brought forward—this person in the employ of Captain Desfrayne—I—I——”
“You have not answered my question. Can you distinctly say the book isnotin that cabinet? You dare not say so.”
“If a denial will satisfy you, I can safely say no book of any kind is within that cabinet,” said madam. “Our interview is at an end, and I decline to receive you again on any pretense whatever.”
“You dare not open that cabinet, and let me see for myself if what you say is true,” said Frank Amberley.
“You do not believe me, then?”
“Candidly, I do not. I say the book is there.”
“I—I refuse to gratify your curiosity——”
“I thought you would. Now, the question is, what is to be done? For Iknowthe book is there, yet if I go to obtain a search-warrant, you will destroy it before I am fairly out of the house.”
“You shall not have it to say that I shrank from letting you see how preposterous your guess is,” said madam, crossing the room to the cabinet.
With a trembling finger, she pressed the spring that unlocked the doors, and threw the cabinet open.
A range of elaborately carved and gilded drawers appeared—a set on the right and a set on the left.
“You are at liberty to open these drawers, sir. As I have suffered your audacity and presumption so far, I may as well let you run on in your silly insolence to the end.”
Frank Amberley made no reply. He availed himself of the permission to look into the drawers, which he opened mechanically, pushing them back without really seeing their contents.
As he drew them out one after another, Madam Guiscardini standing by with a fast-beating heart, he wastrying to recall some dim, misty recollection of a cabinet very similar to this, which he had seen at an old country house in Provençal during the days of his childhood.
He had a vague conception that about the middle of the double row of drawers there was a spring which, properly moved, revealed the existence of a secret hiding-place. The spring was a duplex one, but how it was touched he could not remember.
It would be useless to leave the signora now, with the idea of getting a proper warrant to search the cabinet, for even if the secret were to be solved, or the cabinet taken to pieces, she would burn the volume the moment she found herself alone.
Had he listened to the promptings of the Evil One, he would have made excuses to himself, and left Lucia Guiscardini to her own devices, with liberty to destroy the evidence that would release Paul Desfrayne, but with sublime self-denial, he resolved to press on to the last.
“Are you satisfied, sir?” asked Madam Guiscardini sneeringly, as she noticed his perplexed look on closing the last drawer.
“Very nearly so,” he replied, moving his fingers nervously over the fine filigree work and gilded foliage down the sides of the cabinet.
She dreaded that he would come upon the spring, and saw plainly that he was in search of it. With a rough hand she pushed him away, crying:
“Enough, sir—enough! Allow me to close this cabinet, for it contains numberless articles of value, which——”
But as she pushed Frank Amberley away, his hands touched the duplex spring, and what appeared to be two drawers slowly folded back, sliding in thin layers, one over another, while a fresh drawer was propelled forward in place of the two which disappeared.
A scream from Lucia Guiscardini told the lawyer that he had discovered the object for which he sought. She caught at the filigree handle—it remained immovable.
“Leave the house, sir! I will call my servants to fling you into the street!” screamed Madam Guiscardini, almost beside herself.
The book once found, it would not only ruin her hopes with the prince, but would serve as terrible evidence against her if charged with the murder of the man Gilardoni.
She had intended, Gilardoni agreeing to leave Europe, to make a bargain with Paul Desfrayne, by confessing to him that she had been already married at the time of her union with him, on condition that he took an oath never to betray her affairs to human ear, and never to seek her in any way whatever.
“If you do not quit my house,” she exclaimed, trying to stand between Frank Amberley and the fatal drawer, “I will send for a policeman, and give you into custody on the charge of attempting to rifle these drawers.”
The young man did not answer. There was no longer any doubt that the precious volume lay within a few inches of his hand. The confused memory of the secret spring grew more hazy—he was almost in despair. It seemed hard to be baffled at the moment when victory smiled. Quick as thought, he ran across to the fireplace, and caught up the bright steel poker lying in the fender.
Before Lucia Guiscardini really knew what he meant to do, he had darted back, and with one adroit blow smashed in the front of the drawer.
The laces and handkerchiefs were folded about the faded, ink-stained volume, but Frank dragged them out swift as lightning, and scattered them at his feet. The book then lay revealed, and he snatched at it.
Had the poisoned ring still been on Lucia Guiscardini’s finger, Frank Amberley’s life would not have been worth a second’s purchase. As it was, she for a moment, in her mad rage, measured the possibility of matching her strength against his. But the next, the utter futility of doing anything by force pressed upon her as she glared upon the tall, slender, deep-chested, muscular figure before her.
With a low, moaning growl, like that of a tigress deprived of her young, she glided half-blindly under the silken archway, into the back room, and groped there with an uncertain hand.
Frank took advantage of this moment to rush to the window nearest. It was partially raised, and he flung it wide open.
The cab was still in waiting, directly opposite, on the very spot where poor Gilardoni had stood scarce more than a week since. The driver was sitting tranquilly on the step of his vehicle, smoking a pipe. Frank threw the book so adroitly that it fell at the man’s feet, and called to him. The fellow caught up the dingy volume, and was under the window in a second. Frank dropped a sovereign in his hand, and said, in a clear, distinct tone:
“Drive with that book to eighty-six, Alderman’s Lane, and ask for Mr. Joyner—give it to him; then wait, and if I am not back there in a couple of hours, bring him here. Give that book to no other human being, and tell no one else.”
The man touched his hat, and ran to his cab.
“This ’ereisthe very most rummiest startIever come near,” he said to himself, as he rattled off. “I wonder whatever’s up?”
This scene passed in a moment. As the man was mounting his box, Lucia entered, with the same creeping, tottering, dragging step. In her hand was a tiny, silver-mounted revolver. Her brain had almost given way, and death, disgrace, misery seemed to point at her with gibbering, skeleton fingers. Her one dominant thought was that she must recover that fatal volume at all hazards. She advanced toward Frank Amberley with the aspect of a beautiful beast of prey.
His hands were empty; she glared about to see what he had done with his prize.
“Where is it?” she hoarsely demanded, speaking as if her throat were dry.
“In a place of safety.”
“Where is it, I say? What have you done with it?”
She suddenly noticed the open window, and ran to it. Then the truth flashed upon her.
“You have ruined me!” she screamed, rushing toward the young lawyer. “I have nothing but disgrace and despair to look forward to. But if I suffer, it mattersnot if it be for little or much, and I will have vengeance!”
The click of the lock of her pistol warned Frank of his imminent danger. He sprang upon her, and tried to disarm her. But her grip was tight, and her strength more than he had counted on, and a short, desperate struggle for life ensued.
As he succeeded in snatching the pistol, it went off. The report brought the servants rushing to the room. They found their mistress on her knees, her hair floating wildly about her, her face ashy white, her arms entwined about her visitor, who stood with the pistol in his hand, trying to disengage himself.
“Seize him—seize him—he will kill me!” exclaimed Madam Guiscardini. “He has robbed me, and would murder me!”