Last spring Count Bindo again renewed his lease of the furnished villa on the Viale dei Colli, that beautiful drive that winds up behind the Arno from the Porta Romana, in Florence, past San Miniato. It was a fine old place, standing in its own grounds, and was the German Embassy in the days when the Lily City was the Italian capital.
There were reasons for this. Sir Charles Blythe was living at the Grand, and Henderson was at the Hôtel de la Ville. Acoupwas intended at one of the jewellers on the Ponte Vecchio—a place where it was known that there were a quantity of valuable pearls.
It was not, however, successful; for certain difficulties arose that were insurmountable.
The trio left Florence at the beginning of May, but I was left alone with the car and with the Italian servants to idle away the days as best I could. They had all three gone to Aix, I think.
The only other Englishman left in Florenceappeared to be a man I had recently re-encountered, named Charlie Whitaker. He and I had become great friends, as we had been several years before. I often took him for a run on the car, to Bologna, Livorno, or Siena, and we used to meet nearly every evening.
One stifling August night Florence lay gasping.
Above the clatter of the café, the music, the laughter of women and the loud chatter in Italian, the strident cries of the newsvendors rose in the great moonlit Piazza, with its huge equestrian statue of the beloved Vittorio looming dark against the steely sky.
Only thepopolo, the merry, brown-faced, easy-going Florentines, were still in the sun-baked city. All Society, even the richer tradesmen, and certainly all the foreign residents, had fled—all of the latter save two, Charlie and myself.
You, who know the quaint old mediæval city in the winter “season,” when the smart balls are given at the Corsini or the Strozzi, when the Cascine is filled with pretty women at four o’clock, and the jewellers on the Ponte Vecchio put forth their imitation cinquecento wares, would not know it in August, when beneath that fiery Tuscan sun it is as a city of the dead by day, while at night the lower classes come forth from their slums to idle, to gossip, and to enjoy thebel frescoafter the heat and burden of the day.
On an August night the little dark-eyed seamstress sits and enjoys her ice at the same tin-topped tableat the Gambrinus where the foreign Princess has sat in April. In winter Florence is a city of the wealthy; in summer it is given over entirely to the populace. So great is the sweltering, breathless heat, that everyone who can leave Florence in August leaves it. The great villas and palaces are closed; the Florence Club, that most exclusive institution in Europe, is shut up; the hotels move up to Camaldoli, to Pracchia, or to Abetone; and to be seen in Florence in those blazing days causes wonder and comment.
Charlie and I were the only two foreigners in Florence. I had remained on at the orders of Bindo, and Charlie—well, he remained for the best of reasons, because he hadn’t the money with which to go up into the mountains, or down to the sea.
Charlie Whitaker was an “outsider,” I knew, but not by any fault of his own. He lived in Florence mostly on the charity of his friends. A tall, lithe, good-looking fellow of thirty-two, he came of a Yorkshire stock, and for seven or eight years had lived the gay life of town, and been a member of the Stock Exchange. Left very well off, he had developed keen business instincts, and had been so successful that in three years he had gained a comfortable fortune by speculation. He bought a bijou house in Deanery Street, off Park Lane, turned it inside out, and made a pretty bachelor residence of it.
Half London knew Charlie Whitaker. I first met him when he was about to purchase a new“Napier.” He gave smart luncheon-parties at the Bachelors, dinners at the Savoy, and was the pet of certain countesses of the smart set. Indeed, he led the London life of a man of ample means untrammelled with a woman, until, of a sudden, he failed. Why, nobody knew; even to his most intimate friends the crisis was a complete mystery.
I only know that I met him in the Strand one night. He seemed sad and pensive. Then, when he grasped my hand in farewell, he said—
“Well, Ewart, good-night. I may see you again some day.”
That “some day” came very soon. Two months later he was livingen pensionat twenty-five lire a week in the attic of a great old mediæval palace close to the Piazza Santa Trinità. Florence, the greatest city for gossip in the whole world, quickly knew his past, and nobody would receive him. Snubbed everywhere, jeered at by the stuck-up foreign colony of successful English shopkeepers, he received no invitations, and I believe I was his only friend.
Even my friendship with him brought criticism upon me—modest chauffeur that I was. Why did I make an intimate of such a man? Some declared him to be an absconding bankrupt; others cast suspicion that he had fled from England because of some grave scandal; while others made open charges against him in the Club that were cruel to a degree.
Up at the villa, however, he was always welcome. I alone knew that he was a man of sterling worth, that his misfortunes were none of his own seeking, and that the charges against him were all false. He had made a big speculation and had unfortunately burnt his fingers—that was all.
And on this hot, feverish night, with the clear white moon shining down upon the Piazza, we sat to gossip, to drink our iced bock, and to smoke our long Toscano cigars, which, to the resident in Italy, become so palatable.
I knew that Charlie had had his romance, one of the strangest of all that I had known. Crushed, hipped, bankrupt, almost penniless, he had never mentioned it to me. It was his own private affair, and I, as his friend, never referred to so painful a subject.
It is strange how one takes to some men. All my friends looked askance when I walked about Florence with Charlie Whitaker. Some insinuated that his past was a very black one, and others openly declared that he never dare face the Consul, or go back to England, because a warrant was out for him. Truly he was under a cloud, poor fellow, and I often felt sorry for all the open snubs he received.
As we sat that night smoking outside on the pavement, with the merry, careless populace idling to and fro, he seemed a trifle more pensive than usual, and I inquired the reason.
“Nothing, Ewart,” he declared, with a faintsmile; “nothing very particular. Thoughts—only thoughts of——”
“Of what?”
“Of town—of our dear old London that I suppose I shall never see again,” and his mouth hardened. “Do you remember Pall Mall, the Park, the Devonshire—and Vivi?”
I nodded, and pulled at my cheap cigar.
Vivi! Did I remember her? Why, I had often driven the Honourable Victoria Violet Finlay, the girl—for she was only eighteen—who had once flirted with me when I was in her father’s service. Why, I wondered, did he mention her? Could he know the truth? Could he know the galling bitterness of my own heart? I think not. Through the many months I had been the Count’s chauffeur I had held my secret, though my heart was full of bitterness.
Mention of her name recalled, under that white Italian moonlight, a vision of her—the tall, slim, graceful girlish figure, the oval delicate face with clear blue eyes, and the wealth of red-gold hair beneath her motor-cap. She rose before me with that sad, bitter smile of farewell that she had given me when, as she was seated beside me in the car, on our way from Guildford to London, I bent over her small white hand for the last time.
Whew! Why are we men given memories? Half one’s life seems to be made up of vain regrets. Since that day I had, it was true, neverceased to think of her, yet I had lived a lonely, melancholy life, even though it were fraught with such constant excitement.
“You knew Vivi, of course?” I remarked, after a long silence, looking my fellow-exile straight in the face.
“I met her once or twice at the house of my aunt, Lady Ailesworth,” was his reply. “I wonder where she is now? There was some talk of her marrying Baron de Boek, the Belgian banker. Did you hear it?”
I nodded. The rumour was, alas! too well known to me. How is it that the memory of one woman clings to a man above all others? Why does one woman’s face haunt every man, whatever age he may be, or whether he be honest or a thief?
Whitaker was watching my countenance so intently that I was filled with surprise. I had never told a soul of my flirtation.
Three youths passed along the pavement playing upon their mandolines an air from the latest opera at the Arena, laughing at two hatless girls of the people who were drinking coffee at the table next to us, and next moment theal frescoorchestra in the balcony above struck up a waltz.
“Faugh!” cried my companion, starting up. “Let’s go. This music is intolerable! Let’s walk along the Lung Arno, by the river.”
I rose, and together we strolled to the river-side along that embankment, the favourite walkof Dante and of Petrarch, of Raphael and of Michelangelo. All was silent, for the great ponderous palaces lining the river were closed till winter, and there were no shops or cafés.
For a long time we walked in the brilliant night without uttering a word. At last he said in a strange, hard voice—
“I’ve received news to-day which every other man beside myself would regard as the very worst information possible, and yet, to me, it is the most welcome.”
“What’s that?” I inquired.
“I saw two doctors, Pellegrini and Gori, to-day, and both have said the same thing—I am dying. In a few weeks I shall have ceased to trouble anybody.”
“Dying!” I gasped, halting and staring at him. “Why, my dear fellow, you are the very picture of health.”
“I know,” he smiled. “But I have for a long time suspected myself doomed. I have a complaint that is incurable. Therefore I wonder if you would do me one small favour. Will you keep this letter until I am dead, and afterwards open it and act upon its instructions? They may seem strange to you, but you will ascertain the truth. When you do know the truth, recollect that though dead I beg of you one thing—your forgiveness.”
“Forgiveness? For what? I don’t understand you.”
“No,” he said bitterly. “Of course you don’t. And I have no wish that you should—until after I am dead. You are my only friend, and yet I have to ask you to forgive. Here is the letter,” he added, drawing an envelope from his pocket and handing it to me. “Take it to-night, for I never know if I may live to see another day.”
I took it, and noting its big black seal, placed it carefully in my inner pocket. Two loafers were standing in the shadow in front of us, and their presence reminded me that that end of the Lung Arno is not very safe at night. Therefore we turned, slowly retracing our steps back to the quaint old bridge with the houses upon it—the Ponte Vecchio.
Just before we reached it my companion stopped, and grasping my hand suddenly, said in a choking voice—
“You have been my only friend since my downfall, Ewart. Without you, I should have starved. These very clothes I wear were bought with money you have so generously given me. I can never thank you sufficiently. You have prolonged a useless and broken life, but it will soon be at an end, and I shall no longer be a burden to you.”
“A burden? What rubbish! You’re not yourself to-night, Whitaker. Cheer up, for Heaven’s sake.”
“Can a condemned man laugh? Well,” he added, with a mocking smile, “I’ll try. Come,old fellow, let’s go back to the Gambrinus and have another bock—before we part. I’ve got a franc—one of yours—so I’ll stand it!”
And we walked on to the big Piazza, with its music and its garish cafés, the customers of which overflowed into the square, where they sat in great groups.
Italy is indeed a complex country, and contains more of the flotsam and jetsam of English derelicts than any other country in all Europe. Every Italian town has its owncoterieof broken-down Englishmen and Englishwomen, the first-mentioned mostly sharks, and the latter mostly drunkards. Truly the shifty existence led by these exiles presents a strange phrase of life, so essentially cosmopolitan and yet so essentially tragic.
It was half-past one when I left my friend to walk home out of the town through the narrow Via Romana. The ill-lit neighbourhood through which I had to pass was somewhat unsafe late at night, but being well known in Florence I never feared, and was walking briskly, full of thought of my own love-romance, when, of a sudden, two rough-looking men coming out of a side street collided with me, apologised, and went off hurriedly.
At first I felt bewildered, so sudden was the encounter. My thoughts had been very far away from that dark ancient street. But next moment I felt in my pocket. My wallet—in which onecarries the paper currency of Italy—was gone, and with it Whitaker’s precious letter!
Those men had evidently watched me take out my wallet when on the Lung Arno, and waited for me as I walked home.
I turned to look after them, but they had already disappeared into that maze of crooked, squalid streets around the Pitti. Fortunately, there was not more than a sovereign in it. I was filled with regret, however, on account of my friend’s letter. He had trusted me with some secret. I had accepted the confidence he reposed in me, and yet, by my carelessness, the secret, whatever it was, had passed into other hands. Should I tell him? I hesitated. What would you have done in such circumstances?
Well, I decided to say nothing. If the thief knew me, as he most probably did, he might return the letter anonymously when he discovered that it was of no value. And that there was anything of value within was entirely out of the question.
So months went by. I was ordered to take the car back to England, and then went to Germany and to France. Only once Whitaker wrote to me. Florence, he declared, was very dull now I had left.
Acouphad been made in Biarritz,—a little matter of a few sparklers,—and Bindo and I found ourselves living, early in January, at the Villa Igiea, at Palermo.
As I sat alone, smoking and gazing out upon the blue bay, with the distant mountains purple in the calm sundown, the quickfrou-frouof silken skirts passed close by me, and a tall, slender girl, very elegantly dressed, went forth alone into the beautiful gardens that slope down to the sea. I noted her neat figure, her gait, the red-gold tint of her hair, and the peculiar manner in which she carried her left hand when walking.
Could it be Vivi? I sat up, staring after her in wonder. Her figure was perfect, her elegant cream gown was evidently the “creation” of one of the man-milliners of the Rue de la Paix, and I noticed that the women sitting around had turned and were admiring her for her generalchic.
She turned into the gardens ere I could catch a glimpse of her face, and I sat back again, laughing at my own foolishness. Somehow, during the past three years, I had fancied I saw her a dozen times—in London, in Rome, in Paris, in Nice, and elsewhere. But I had always, alas! discovered it to be an illusion. The figure of this girl in cream merely resembled hers, that was all. I tried to convince myself of it, and yet I was unable to do so. Why, I cannot tell, but I had been seized with a keen desire to see her face. I half rose, but sat back again, ridiculing my own thoughts. And so five minutes passed, until, unable to resist longer, I rose, went forth into the gardens, and wandered among the palms in search of her.
At last I found her standing by a low wall, herface turned towards the sea. Alone, she had paused in her walk, and with her eyes turned across the bay she was in a deep reverie. Then, as she heard my footstep, she turned and faced me.
“Vivi!” I cried, rushing toward her.
“You!—George!” she gasped, starting back in sudden amazement.
“Yes,” I said madly. “At last, after all this long time, I have found you!”
She held her breath. Her beautiful countenance changed, her sweet mouth hardened; I fancied I saw tears welling in her great blue eyes that were so fathomless.
“I—I did not dream that you were here, or I would never have come,” she faltered. “Never!”
“Because you still wish to avoid me—eh? Your memory still remains to me—but, alas! only a memory,” I said sadly, taking her hand again and holding it firmly within my own. “I am only a chauffeur.”
Our eyes met. She looked at me long and steadily. Her chest rose and fell, and she turned her gaze from me, away to the purple mountains across the bay.
“Let me still remain only a memory,” she answered in a low, strained voice. “It is as painful to me to meet you—as to you.”
“But why? Tell me why?” I demanded, raising her soft hand again to my lips. “Do you remember that day on the Ripley road—the day when we parted?”
She nodded, and her chest rose and fell again, stirred by her own deep emotions.
“You would give me no reason for your sudden decision.”
“And I still can give you none.”
“But why?”
She was silent, standing there with the brilliant Southern afterglow falling full upon her beautiful face. Behind her was a background of feathery palms, and we were alone.
I still held her hand, though she endeavoured to withdraw it.
“Ah!” I cried, “you always withhold your reason from me. I am not rich like other men who admire and flatter you, yet I tell you—ah yes, I swear to you—that only you do I love. Ever since you came fresh from your school in Germany I admired you. Do you remember how many times you sat at my side on the old Panhard? Surely you must have known that? Surely you must have guessed the reason why I always preferred you in the front seat?”
“Yes—yes!” she faltered, interrupting me. “I know. I loved you, but I was foolish—very foolish.”
“Why foolish?”
She made no reply, but burst suddenly into tears.
Tenderly I placed my arm about her waist. What could I do, save to try and comfort her? In the three years that had passed she had grown into womanhood, and yet she still preserved that sweet girlishness that, in these go-ahead days, is so refreshing and attractive in a woman in her early twenties.
In those calm moments in the glorious Siciliansundown I recollected those days when at seventeen she had admitted her love for me, and we were happy. Visions of that blissful past arose before me—and then the crushing blow I had received prior to our parting.
“Vivi, tell me,” I whispered at last, “why do you still hold aloof from me?”
“Because I—I must.”
“But why? You surely are now your own mistress?”
Her eyes were fixed upon me again very gravely for some moments in silence. Then she answered in a low voice—
“But I can never marry you. It is impossible.”
“No, I know. There is such a wide difference in our stations,” I said regretfully.
“No, it is not that. The reason is one that is my own secret,” was her answer, as she drew her breath and her little hands clenched themselves.
“May I not know it?”
“No—never. It—well, it concerns myself alone.”
“But you still love me, Vivi? You still think of me?” I cried.
“Occasionally.”
And then she turned away in the direction of the hotel.
I followed, and grasping her by the hand, repeated my question.
“My secret is my own,” was all the satisfaction she would give me.
And I was forced at last to allow her to walk back to the hotel, and to follow her alone.
What was the nature of her secret?
If ever a man’s heart sank to the depths of despair mine sank at that moment. She had been all the world to me, and, cosmopolitan adventurer that I had now become, I met a thousand bright-eyedchicand attractive women, yet I revered her memory as the one woman who was pure and perfect.
I watched her disappear into the green-carpeted hotel-lounge, where an orchestra of mandolinists were playing an air fromLa Bohème. Then I turned away, full of my own sad thoughts, and strolled in the falling twilight beside the grey sea.
Just before dinner, after re-entering the hotel, I wrote a note and gave it to the hall-porter to send to the Signorina.
“The Signorina and the Signora have left, Signore. They went down to the boat for Naples half an hour ago.”
I tore up the note, and next day left Palermo.
Next night I was in Naples, but could find no trace of them. So I went on to Rome, where I was equally unsuccessful. From the Eternal City I took the express to Calais, and on to London, where I learnt that the Viscount her father had died six months before, and that she was travelling on the Continent with her aunt.
Nearly a year passed without any news of my love.
I spent the spring at Monte Carlo, and in May, the month of flowers, found myself back at Bindo’s old villa in Florence, gloomy to me on account of my own loneliness. The two English dogs barked me welcome, and Charlie Whitaker that night came and dined; for Bindo was away.
After dinner we sat in the long wicker chairs out in the garden beneath the palms, taking our coffee in the flower-scented air, with the myriad fire-flies dancing about us.
At table Charlie had been in his best mood, telling me all the gossip of Florence, but out in the garden, with his face in the shadow, he seemed to become morose and uncommunicative. I asked how he had got on during my absence, for I knew he was friendless.
“Oh, fairly well,” was his answer. “A bit lonely, you know. But I used to come up here every day and take the dogs out for a run. An outsider like I am can’t expect invitations to dinners and dances, you know;” and he sighed, and drew vigorously at his cigar.
“By the way,” I said presently, “you remember you once mentioned that you knew Vivi Finlay in the old days in town. I met her in Palermo in the winter.”
He started from his chair, and leaning towards me, echoed—
“You met her!—you? Tell me about her. How did she look? What is she doing?” he asked, with an earnest eagerness that surprised me.
Briefly I explained how I had walked and chatted with her in the gardens of the Igiea at Palermo, though I did not tell him the subject of our conversation. I tried, too, to induce him to tell me what he knew of her, but he would say nothing beyond what I already knew.
“I wonder she don’t marry,” I remarked at last; but to this he made no response, though I fancied that in the half light I detected a curious smile upon his face, as though he was aware that we had been lovers.
He deftly turned the conversation, though he became more bitter, as if his life was now even more soured than formerly. Then, at midnight, he took his hat and stick, and I opened the gate of the drive and let him out upon the road.
As he left, he grasped my hand warmly, and in a voice full of emotion said—
“Good-night, Ewart. May you be rewarded one day for keeping from starvation a good-for-nothing devil like myself!”
And he passed on into the darkness beneath the trees, on his way back to his high-up humble room down in the heart of the town.
At eight o’clock next morning, when I met Pietro, Bindo’s man, I noticed an unusual expression upon his face, and asked him what had happened.
“I have bad news for you, Signor Ewart,” he answered with hesitation. “At four o’clock this morning the Signor Whitaker was found by the police lying upon the pavement of the Lung Arno, close to the Porta San Frediano. He was dead—struck down with a knife from behind.”
“Murdered!” I gasped.
“Yes, Signore. It is already in the papers;” and he handed me a copy of theNazione.
Dumbfounded, unnerved, I dressed myself quickly, and driving down to the police-office, saw the head of the detective department, a man named Bianchi.
The sharp-featured little man sitting at the table, after taking down a summary of all I knew regarding my poor friend, explained how the discovery had been made. The body was quite cold when found, and the deep wound between the shoulders showed most conclusively that he had fallen by the hand of an assassin. I was then shown the body, and looked upon the face of poor Charlie, the “outsider,” for the last time.
“He had no money upon him,” I told Bianchi. “Indeed, before leaving me he had remarked that he was almost without a soldo.”
“Yes. It is that very fact which puzzles us. The motive of the crime was evidently not robbery.”
In the days that succeeded the police made most searching inquiries, but discovered nothing. My only regret—and it was indeed a deep one—was thatI had lost the letter he had given me with injunctions to open it after his death. Did he fear assassination? I wondered. Did that letter give any clue to the assassin?
But the precious document, whatever it might be, was now irretrievably lost, and the death of “Mr. Charles Whitaker, late of the Stock Exchange,” as the papers put it, remained one of the many murder-mysteries of the city of Florence.
Months had gone by—months of constant travel and loneliness, grief and despair.
I was in my room at the Hotel Bonne Femme in Turin, having a wash after a dusty run with the “forty,” when the waiter announced Mr. Bianchi, and the sharp-featured, black-haired little man, recently promoted from Florence to watch the Anarchists in Milan.
“I am very glad, Signor Ewart, that I have been able to catch you here; you are such a bird of passage, you know,” he said in Italian. “But in searching the house of a thief in Florence the other day our men found this letter, addressed to you;” and he produced from his pocket the missive that Charlie had on that hot night entrusted to my care.
I broke the black seal and read it eagerly. Its contents held me speechless in amazement.
“Do you know anything of a young man named Giovanni Murri, a Florentine?” I inquired quickly.
“Murri?” he repeated, knitting his brows. “Why,if I remember aright, a young man of that name was found drowned in the Arno on the same day that your friend the Signor Whitaker was discovered dead. He had been a waiter in London, it was said.”
“That was the man. He killed my poor friend, and then committed suicide;” and I briefly explained how Whitaker had given me the letter which two hours afterwards had been stolen from me.
“The thief was the son of Count di Ferraris’ gardener—a bad character. Finding that it was addressed to you, he evidently intended to return it unopened, and forgot to do so,” Bianchi said. “But may I not read the letter?”
“No,” I replied firmly. “It concerns a purely private affair. All that I can tell you is that Murri killed my friend. It explains the mystery.”
Three nights later, I stood with my well-beloved in the elegant drawing-room of a house just off Park Lane, where she was living with her aunt.
I had placed the dead man’s letter in her hand, and she was reading it breathlessly, her sweet face blanched, her tiny hands trembling.
“Mr. Ewart,” she faltered hoarsely, her eyes downcast as she stood before me, “it is the truth. I ought to have told you long ago. Forgive me.”
“I have already forgiven you. You must have suffered just as bitterly as I have done,” I said, taking her hand.
“Ah yes. God alone knows the wretched life I have led, loving you and yet not daring to tell you my secret. As Charlie has written here, the young Italian, my father’s valet, fell in love with me when I came home from school in Germany, and once I foolishly allowed him to kiss me. From that moment he became filled with a mad passion for me, and though I induced my father to dismiss him, he haunted me. Then I met Charlie Whitaker, and fancied that I loved him. Every girl is anxious to secure a husband. He was rich, kind, good-looking, and all that was eligible, save that he was not of the nobility, and for that reason he knew that my father would discountenance him. He, however, induced me to take a step that I afterwards bitterly regretted. I met him one morning at the registry office at Kensington, and we were married. We lunched together at the Savoy, and then I drove home again. That very afternoon the crash came, and on that same night he was compelled to leave England for the Continent, a ruined man.”
“He must have known of the impending crisis,” I remarked simply.
“I fear he did,” was her reply. “But it was only a week later that you, who had known me so long, spoke to me. You told me of your love, alas! too late. What could I reply? What irony of Fate!”
“Yes, yes. I see. You could not tell me the truth.”
“No. For several reasons. I loved you, yetI knew that if you were in ignorance you would remain Charlie’s friend. Ah! you cannot know the awful suspense, and the thousand and one subterfuges I had to adopt. Murri, who was still in London, employed at the Carlton Club, continued to pester me with his passionate letters—the letters of an imbecile. Somehow, a year later, he discovered our marriage, by the official record, I think, and then he met me in secret one day and vowed a terrible vengeance.”
“His threat he carried out,” I said; “and you, my darling, are at last free.”
Her head fell upon my shoulder, her chiffons rose and fell again, and our lips met in a long, hot, passionate caress, by which I knew that she was still mine—still my own sweet love.
But I was merely a chauffeur—and an adventurer.
That is why I have not married.
“Ah! your London is such a strange place. So dull, so triste—so very damp and foggy.”
“Not always, mademoiselle,” I replied. “You have been there in winter. You should go in June. In the season it is as pleasant as anywhere else in the world.”
“I have no desire to return. And yet——”
“Well?”
“And yet I have decided to go straight to Boulogne, and across the Channel.”
I had met Julie Rosier under curious circumstances only a few hours before. I was on a run alone, with the forty “Napier,” from Limoges to London, and on that particular winter’s night had pulled up at the small station of Bersac to send a telegram. I had written out the message, leaving the car outside, and was walking along the platform, when the stationmaster, who had been talking with a tall, dark-haired, good-looking girl, approached me, cap in hand.
“Excuse me, m’sieur, but a lady wishes to ask a great favour of you.”
“Of me? What is it?” I inquired, rising.
Glancing at the tall figure in black, I saw that she was not more than twenty-two at the outside, and that she had the bearing and manner of a lady.
“Well, m’sieur, she will explain herself,” the man said; whereupon the fair stranger approached, bowing, and exclaimed—
“I trust M’sieur will pardon me for what I am about to ask. I know it is great presumption on my part, a total stranger, but the fact is that I am bound to get to Paris to-morrow morning. It is imperative—most imperative—that I should be there and keep an appointment. I find, however, that the last train has gone. I thought——” and she hesitated, with downcast eyes.
“You mean that you want me to allow you to travel in the car, mademoiselle?” I said, with a smile.
“Ah! m’sieur, if you would—if you only would! It would be an act of friendship that I would never forget.”
She saw my hesitation, and I detected how anxious she became. Her gloved hands were trembling, and she seemed agitated and pale to the lips.
Again I scrutinised her. There was nothing of the police spy or adventuress about her. On the contrary, she seemed a very charmingly modest young woman.
“But surely it would be rather wearisome, mademoiselle?” I said.
“No, no, not at all. I must get to Paris at all costs. Ah! m’sieur, you will allow me to do as I ask, will you not? Do, I implore you!”
I made no reply; for, truth to tell, although I was not suspicious, I hesitated to allow the fair stranger to be my travelling companion. It was against my principle. Yet, reading disinclination in my silence, she continued—
“Ah! m’sieur, if you only knew in what deadly peril I am! By granting this favour to me you can——” and she broke off short. “Well,” she went on, “I may as well tell you the truth, m’sieur;” and in her eyes there was a strange look that I had never seen in those of any woman before,—“you can save my life.”
“Your life?” I echoed, but at that moment the stationmaster, standing at the buffet door, said—
“Pardon, m’sieur. I am just closing the station. The last train has departed.”
“Do take me!” implored the girl. “Do, m’sieur! Do!”
There was no time for further discussion, therefore I did as she requested, and a few moments later, with a dressing-case, which was all the baggage she had, she mounted into the car beside me, and we moved off northward to the capital.
I offered her the fur rug, and she wrapped it about her knees with the air of one used to motoring.
And so, hour after hour, we sat and chatted. I asked her if she liked a cigarette, and she gladly accepted. So we smoked together, while she told me something of herself. She was a native of Nimes, where her people had been wealthy landowners, she said, but some unfortunate speculation on her father’s part brought ruin to them, and she was now governess in the family of a certain Baron de Moret, of the Château de Moret, near Paris.
A governess! I had believed from her dress and manner that she was at least the daughter of some French aristocrat, and I confess I was disappointed to find that she was only a superior servant.
“I have just come from Nice,” she explained, “on very urgent business—business that concerns my own self. If I am not in Paris this morning I shall, in all probability, pay the penalty with my life.”
“How? What do you mean?”
In the grey dawn, as we went on towards Paris, I saw that her countenance was that of a woman who held a secret. At first I had been conscious that there was something unusual about her, and suspected her to be an adventuress; but now, on further acquaintance, I became convinced that she held possession of some knowledge that she was yearning to betray, yet feared to do so.
One fact that struck me as curious was that, in the course of our conversation, she showed thatshe knew my destination was London. This puzzled me.
“When we arrive in Paris I must leave you to keep my appointments,” she said. “We will meet again at the corner of the Rue Royale, if you really will take me on to Boulogne with you?”
“Most certainly,” was my reply.
“Ah!” she sighed, looking straight into my face with those great dark eyes that were so luminous, “you do not know—you can never guess what a great service you have rendered me by allowing me to travel here with you. My peril is the gravest that—well, that ever threatened a woman; yet now, by your aid, I shall be able to save myself. Otherwise, to-morrow my body would have been exposed in the Morgue—the corpse of a woman unknown.”
“These words of yours interest me.”
“Ah! m’sieur, you do not know. And I cannot tell you. It is a secret—ah! if I only dare speak you would help me, I know;” and I saw in her face a look full of apprehension and distress.
As she raised her hand to push the dark hair from her brow, as though it oppressed her, my eyes caught sight of something glistening upon her wrist, half concealed by the lace on her sleeve. It was a magnificent diamond bangle.
Surely such an ornament would not be worn by a mere governess! I looked again into her handsomeface, and wondered if she were deceiving me.
“If it be in my power to assist you, mademoiselle, I will do so with the greatest pleasure. But of course I cannot without knowing the circumstances.”
“And I regret that my lips are closed concerning them,” she sighed, looking straight before her despairingly.
“Do you not fear to go alone?”
“I fear them no longer,” was her reply, as she glanced at the little gold watch in her bracelet. “We shall be in Paris before ten o’clock—thanks to you, m’sieur.”
“Well, when you first made the request I had no idea of the urgency of your journey,” I remarked. “But I’m glad, very glad, that I’ve had an opportunity of rendering you some slight service.”
“Slight, m’sieur? Why, you have saved me. I owe you a debt which I can never repay—never;” and the laces at her throat rose and fell as she sighed, her wonderful eyes still fixed upon me.
Gradually the yellow sun rose over the bare frozen lands over which we were speeding, and when at last we entered Paris, I set her down in the Place Vendôme.
“Au revoir, m’sieur, till twelve, at the Rue Royale,” she exclaimed, with a merry smile and a bow, as she drove away in a cab, leavingme upon the kerb gazing after her and wondering.
Was she really a governess, as she pretended?
Her clothes, her manner, her smart chatter, her exquisitechic, all revealed good breeding and a high station in life. There was no touch of cheap shabbiness—or at least I could not detect it.
A few moments before twelve she alighted from the cab at the corner of the Rue Royale and greeted me merrily. Her face was slightly flushed, and I thought her hand trembled as I took it. But together we mounted into the car again.
“You seem a constant traveller on the road, m’sieur,” she said, as we went along.
“I’m a constant traveller,” I replied, with a laugh. “A little too constant, perhaps. One gets wearied with such continual travel as I am forced to undertake. I never know to-morrow where I may be, and I move swiftly from one place to another, never spending more than a day or two in the same place.”
I did not, for obvious reasons, tell her my profession.
“But it must be very pleasant to travel so much,” she declared. “I would love to be able to do so. I’m passionately fond of constant change.”
Together we went on to Boulogne, crossed to Folkestone, and that same night at midnight entered London.
On our journey she gave me an address in the Vauxhall Bridge Road, where, she said, a letter would find her. She refused to tell me her destination or to allow me to see her into a hansom. This latter fact caused me considerable reflection. Why had she so suddenly made up her mind to come to London? and why should I not know whither she went, when she had told me so many details concerning herself?
Of one fact I felt quite convinced—namely, that she had lied to me. She was not a governess, as she pretended. Besides, I had been seized by suspicion that a tall, thin-faced elderly man, rather shabbily dressed, whom I had noticed idling in the Rue Royale, had followed us by rail. I thought I saw him outside the Tivoli, in the Strand, where she descended.
His reappearance there recalled to me that he had watched us in the Rue Royale, and had appeared intensely interested in all our movements. Whether my pretty travelling-companion noticed him I do not know. I, however, watched her as she walked along the Strand carrying her dressing-bag, and saw the tall man striding after her. Adventurer was written upon the fellow’s face. His grey moustache was upturned, and his keen grey eyes looked out from beneath shaggy brows, while his dark threadbare overcoat was tightly buttoned across his chest for greater warmth.
Without approaching her, he stood back in theshadow, and saw her enter a hansom and drive towards Charing Cross. It was clear that she was not going to the address she had given me, for she was driving in the opposite direction.
My duty was to drive direct to Clifford Street and report to Bindo, but so interested was I in the thin-faced watcher that I turned the car into the courtyard of the Cecil in the Strand and left it there, in order to keep further observation upon the stranger.
Had not mademoiselle declared herself to be in danger of her life? If so, was it not possible that this fellow, whoever he was, was a secret assassin?
I did not like the aspect of the affair at all. I ought to have warned her against him, and I now became filled with regret. She was a complete mystery, and as I dogged the footsteps of the unknown foreigner—for that he undoubtedly was—I became more deeply interested in what was in progress.
He walked to Trafalgar Square, where he hesitated in such a manner as to show that he was not well acquainted with London. He did not know which of the converging thoroughfares to take. At last he inquired of the constable on point duty, and then went up St. Martin’s Lane.
As soon as he had turned I approached the policeman and asked what the stranger wanted, explaining that he was a suspicious character whom I was following.
“’E’s a Frenchman. ’E wants Burton Crescent.”
“Where’s that?”
“Why, just off the Euston Road—close to Judd Street. I’ve told ’im the way.”
I took a hansom, and drove to the place in question, a semicircle of dark-looking, old-fashioned houses of the Bloomsbury type—most of them let out in apartments. Then, alighting, I loitered for half an hour up and down, to await the arrival of the stranger.
He came at last, his tall meagre figure looming dark in the lamp-light. Very eagerly he walked round the Crescent, examining the numbers of the houses, until he came to one, rather cleaner than the others, of which he took careful observation.
I, too, took note of the number.
Afterwards, the stranger turned into the Euston Road, crossed to King’s Cross Station, where he sent a telegram, and then went to one of the small uninviting private hotels in the neighbourhood. Having seen him there, I returned to Burton Crescent, and for an hour watched the house, wondering whether the mysterious Julie had taken up her abode there. To me it seemed as though the stranger had overheard the directions she had given the cabman.
The windows of the house were closed by green venetian blinds. I could see that there were lights in most of the rooms, while over the fan-light of the front door was a small transparent square ofglass, bearing what seemed to be the representation of some Greek saint. The front steps were well kept, and in the deep basement was a well-lighted kitchen.
I had been there about half an hour when the door opened, and a middle-aged man in evening dress, and wearing a black overcoat and crush hat, emerged. His dark face was an aristocratic one, and as he descended the steps he drew on his white gloves, for he was evidently on his way to the theatre. I took good notice of his face, for it was a striking countenance—one which once seen could never be forgotten.
A man-servant behind him blew a cab-whistle, a hansom came up, and he drove away. Then I walked up and down in the vicinity, keeping a weary vigil; for my curiosity was now much excited. The stranger meant mischief. Of that I was certain.
The one point I wished to clear up was whether Julie Rosier was actually within that house. But though I watched until I became half frozen in the drizzling rain, all was in vain. So I took a cab and drove to Clifford Street, to report my arrival to Count Bindo.
That same night, when I got to my rooms, I wrote a line to the address Julie had given me, asking whether she would make an appointment to meet me, as I wished to give her some very important information concerning herself, and to this on the following day I received a reply askingme to call at the house in Burton Crescent that evening at nine o’clock.
Naturally I went. My surmise was correct that the house watched by the stranger was her abode. The fellow was keeping observation upon it with some evil intent.
The man-servant, on admitting me, showed me into a well-furnished drawing-room on the first floor, where sat my pretty travelling-companion ready to receive me.
In French she greeted me very warmly, bade me be seated, and after some preliminaries inquired the nature of the information which I wished to impart to her.
Very briefly I told her of the shabby watcher, whereupon she sprang to her feet with a cry of mingled terror and surprise.
“Describe him—quickly, M’sieur Ewart!” she urged in breathless agitation.
I did so, and she sat back again in her chair, staring straight before her.
“Ah!” she gasped, her countenance pale as death. “Then they mean revenge, after all. Very well! Now that I am forewarned I shall know how to act.”
She rose, and pacing the room in agitation, pushed back the dark hair from her brow. Then her hands clenched themselves, and her teeth were set, for she was desperate.
The shabby man was an emissary of her enemies, she told me as much. Yet in all she said wasmystery. At one moment I was convinced that she had told the truth when she said she was a governess, and at the next I suspected her of trying to deceive.
Presently, after she had handed me a cigarette, the servant tapped at the door, and a well-dressed man entered—the same man I had seen leave the house two nights previously.
“May I introduce you?” mademoiselle asked. “M’sieur Ewart—M’sieur le Baron de Moret.”
“Charmed to make your acquaintance, sir,” the Baron said, grasping my hand. “Mademoiselle here has already spoken of you.”
“The satisfaction is mutual, I assure you, Baron,” was my reply, and then we re-seated ourselves and began to chat.
Suddenly mademoiselle made some remark in a language which I did not understand. The effect it had upon the new-comer was almost electrical. He started from his seat, glaring at her. Then he began to question her rapidly in the unknown tongue.
He was a flashily-dressed man, of overbearing manner, with a thick neck and square, determined chin. It was quite evident that the warning I had given them aroused their apprehensions, for they held a rapid consultation, and then Julie went out, returning with another man, a dark-haired, lowbred-looking foreigner, who spoke the same tongue as his companions.
They disregarded my presence altogether in theireager consultation, therefore I rose to go; for I saw that I was not wanted.
Julie held my hand and looked into my eyes in mute appeal. She appeared anxious to say something to me in private. At least that was my impression.
When I left the house I passed, at the end of the Crescent, a shabby man idly smoking. Was he one of the watchers?
Four days went by. Soon my rest would be at an end, and I should be travelling at a moment’s notice with Blythe and Bindo to the farther end of Europe.
One evening I was passing through the great hall of the Hotel Cecil to descend to the American bar, where I frequently had a cocktail, when a neatly-dressed figure in black rose and greeted me. It was Julie, who had probably been awaiting me an hour or more.
“May I speak to you?” she asked breathlessly, when we had exchanged greetings. “I wish to apologise for the manner in which I treated you the other evening.”
I assured her that no apologies were needed, and together we strolled up and down the courtyard between the hotel entrance and the Strand.
“I really ought not to trouble you with my affairs,” she said presently, in an apologetic tone, “but you remember what I told you when you so kindly allowed me to travel with you—I mean of my peril?”
“Certainly. But I thought it was all over.”
“I foolishly believed that it was. But I am watched; I—I’m a marked woman.” Then, after some hesitation, she added, “I wonder if you would do me another favour. You could save my life, M’sieur Ewart—if you only would.”
“Well, if I can render you such a service, mademoiselle, I shall be only too delighted. As I told you the other day, my next journey is to Petersburg, and I may have to start any hour after midnight to-morrow. What can I do?”
“At present my plans are immature,” she answered after a pause. “But why not dine with me to-morrow night? We have some friends, but we shall be able to escape them, and discuss the matter alone. Do come.”
I accepted, and she taking a hansom in the Strand, drove off.
On the following night at eight I entered the well-furnished drawing-room in Burton Crescent, where three well-dressed men and three rather smart ladies were assembled, including my hostess. They were all foreigners, and among them was the Baron, who appeared to be the most honoured guest. It was now quite plain that, instead of being a governess as she had asserted, she was a lady of good family and the Baron’s social equal.
The party was a very pleasant one, and there was considerable merriment at table. My hostess’s apprehension of the previous day had all disappeared,while the Baron’s demeanour was one of calm security.
I sat at my hostess’s left hand, and she was particularly gracious to me, the whole conversation at table being in French.
At last, after dessert, the Baron remarked that, as it was New Year’s Day, we should have snap-dragon, and, with his hostess’s permission, left the dining-room and prepared it. Presently it appeared in a big antique Worcester bowl, and was placed on the table close to me.
Then the electric light was switched off, and the spirit ignited.
Next moment, with shouts and laughter, the blue flames shedding a weird light upon our faces, we were pulling the plums out of the fire—a childish amusement permissible because it was the New Year.
I had placed one in my mouth and swallowed it, but as I was taking a second from the blue flames I suddenly felt a faintness. At first I put it down to the heat of the room, but a moment later I felt a sharp spasm through my heart, and my brain swelled too large for my skull. My jaws were set. I tried to speak, but was unable to articulate a word.
I saw the fun had stopped and the faces of all were turned upon me anxiously. The Baron had risen, and his dark countenance peered into mine with a fiendish, murderous expression.
“I’m ill!” I gasped. “I—I’m sure I’m poisoned!”
The faces of all smiled again, while the Baron uttered some words which I could not understand, and then there was a dead silence, all still watching me intently—all except a fair-haired young man opposite me, who seemed to have fallen back in his chair unconscious.
“You fiends!” I cried, with a great effort, as I struggled to rise. “What have I done to you that you should—poison—me?”
I know that the Baron grinned in my face, and that I fell forward heavily upon the table, my heart gripped in the spasm of death.
Of what occurred afterwards I have no recollection, for when I slowly regained knowledge of things around me, I found myself lying beneath a bare, leafless hedge in a grass field. I managed to struggle to my feet, and discovered myself in a bare, flat, open country. As far as I could judge it was midday. I got to a gate, skirted a hedge, and gained the main road. With difficulty I walked to the nearest town, a distance of about four miles, without meeting a soul, and to my surprise found myself in Hitchin. The spectacle of a man entering the town in evening dress and hatless in broad daylight was no doubt curious, but I was anxious to return to London and give information against those who had, without any apparent motive, laid an ingenious plot to poison me.
At the “Sun” I learned that the time was eleven in the morning. The only manner in which I could account for my presence in Hitchin was that,believed to be dead by the Baron and his accomplices, I had been conveyed in a car to the spot where I was found.
What, I wondered, had become of the fair-haired young man whom I had seen unconscious opposite me?
A few shillings remained in my pocket, and, strangely enough, beside me when I recovered consciousness I had found a small fluted phial marked “Prussic acid—poison.” The assassins had attempted to make it apparent that I had committed suicide!
Two hours later, after a rest and a wash, I borrowed an overcoat and golf-cap, and took the train to King’s Cross. At Judd Street Police Station I made a statement, and with two plain-clothes officers returned to the house in Burton Crescent, only to find that the fair Julie and her friends had flown.
On forcing the door, we found the dining-table just as it had been left after the poisoned snap-dragon of the previous night. Nothing had been touched. Only Julie, the Baron, the man-servant, and the guests had all gone, and the place was deserted.
The police were utterly puzzled at the entire absence of motive.
On my return to my rooms I found orders from Bindo to start at once for Petersburg, which I was compelled to do. So I left London full of wonder at my exciting experience, and notuntil my arrival at Wirballen, the Russian frontier, six days later, did I discover that, though my passport remained in my wallet, a special police permit to enable me to pass in and out of the districts affected by the revolutionary Terror, was missing! It was a permit which Blythe had cleverly obtained through one of his friends, a high diplomatist, and without which I could not move rapidly in Russia.
Was it possible that Julie and her friends had stolen it? Was it to be believed that the scoundrelly Baron had attempted to take my life by such dastardly trickery in order to secure that all-powerful document?
That it was of greatest value to any revolutionist I knew quite well, for upon it was the signature of the Minister of the Interior, and its bearer, immune from arrest or interference by the police, might come and go in Russia without let or hindrance.
Were they Russians? Certainly the language they had spoken was not Russian, but it might have been Polish. Where was the young man who had been my fellow-victim?
Loss of this special permit caused me considerable inconvenience, for I had to go to Moscow, and the Terror raging there, I had to get another permit before I could pass and repass the military cordon.
Yes, Julie Rosier was a mystery. Indeed, the whole affair was a complete enigma.
I duly returned to London, after assisting Bindo in trying to make acoupthat was unfortunately in vain, and then learnt that the body of an unknown young man in evening dress had been found in the river Crouch in Essex, and from the photograph shown me at Scotland Yard I identified it as that of my fellow-guest.
Through the whole year the adventure has sorely puzzled me, and only the other day light was thrown upon it in the following manner—
I was in Petersburg again, when I received a polite note from General Zuroff, the chief of police, requesting me to call upon him. The summons caused me considerable apprehension I must admit.
On entering his room at the Ministry, he gave me a cigarette, and commenced to chat. Then suddenly he touched a bell, another door opened, and I was amazed at seeing before me, between two grey-coated police-officers, a woman—Julie Rosier!
For an instant she glared at me as though she saw an apparition. Then, with a loud scream, she fainted.
“Ah!” exclaimed Zuroff. “Then what is reported is correct—eh? You and your friend the Baron enticed this Englishman to your house in London, for you knew by some means that he carried the order of the Minister allowing the bearer free passage everywhere in Russia. You saw that if you merely stole it he would give information, and it would be immediatelycancelled. Therefore you cleverly plotted to take his life and make it appear as a case of suicide.” Then, with a wave of his hand, he said, “Take the prisoner back to the fortress.”
The woman uttered no word. She only fixed her big dark eyes upon me with an expression of abject terror, and then the guards led her out.
From a drawer Zuroff took the precious document that had been stolen from me, saying—
“Julie Rosier—or Sophie Markovitch, as her real name is—was arrested in a house in the Nevski yesterday, while the Baron was discovered at the Hôtel d’Angleterre. Both are most violent revolutionists, and to them is due the terrible rioting in Moscow a few months ago. The Baron was hand in hand with Gapon and his colleagues, but escaped to England, and has been there for nearly a year, until, as the outcome of the dastardly plot against you, he altered his appearance, and returned as George Ewart, chauffeur to Baron Bindo di Ferraris of Rome. The arrests yesterday were very smartly made.”
“But how do you know the details of the attempt upon me?”
“All men can be bought at a price. They were watched constantly while in London. Besides, one of your fellow-guests of that night—revolutionists all of them—recently turned police spy and reported the facts. It was he who gave us information regarding the whereabouts of Sophie and the Baron.”
“But another man—a young fellow with fair hair—ate some of the plums from the snap-dragon and died.”
“Yes; he was young Ivan Kinski—a Pole, who, though a Terrorist, was suspected by his friends of being a spy. You took one plum only, while he probably took more. At any rate, you had a very narrow escape. But you at least have the satisfaction of knowing that Julie will never again fascinate, and the Baron will never again be given an opportunity of preparing his fatal snap-dragon.”
My friendliness with Zuroff stood us in good stead; for, a week later, Bindo and Blythe contrived to get a very pretty diamond necklet and pair of earrings from a lady in Petersburg, which fetched six hundred golden louis in Amsterdam.