Chapter Nine.A Double Game.Lord Nassington drove his big red sixty horse-power six-cylinder “Napier” slowly up the Corso in Rome.By his side was his smart chauffeur, Garrett, in dark-green livery with the hand holding a garland proper, the crest of the Nassingtons, upon his bright buttons.It was four o’clock, the hour of thepasseggiata, the hour when those wintering in the Eternal City go forth in carriages and cars to drive up and down the long, narrow Corso in order to see, and be seen, to exchange bows with each other, and to conclude the processional drive at slow pace owing to the crowded state of the street by a tour of the Pincian hill whence one obtains a magnificent view of Rome and the Tiber in the sunset.Roman society is the most exclusive in the world. Your Roman princess will usually take her airing in her brougham with the windows carefully closed, even on a warm spring afternoon. She holds herself aloof from the crowd of wealthy foreigners, even though her great gaunt palazzo has been denuded of every picture and work of art years ago, and she lives with adonna di casain four or five meagre rooms on the first floor, the remainder of the great place being unfurnished and untenanted.There is more pitiful make-believe among the aristocracy of Rome than in any other city in the world. The old principessa, the marchesa, and the contessa keep themselves within their own little circle, and sneer at the wealthy foreigner and his blatant display of riches. One hears girls of the school-room discussing the social scale of passers-by, and disregarding them as not being “of the aristocracy” like themselves.Truly the Eternal City is a complex one in winter, and the Corso at four o’clock, is the centre of it all. You know that slowly-passing almost funereal line of carriages, some of them very old and almost hearse-like, moving up and down, half of them emblazoned with coronets and shields—for the Italian is ever proud of his heraldry—while the other half hired conveyances, many of them ordinary cabs in which sit some of the wealthiest men and women in Europe who have come south to see the antiquities and to enjoy the sunshine.Behind the lumbering old-fashioned brougham of a weedy marchesa, Lord Nassington drove his big powerful car at snail’s pace, and almost silently. In such traffic the flexibility of the six-cylinder is at once appreciated.Both Garrett and his master had their eyes about them, as though in search of some one.A dozen times pretty women in furs bowed to Lord Nassington, who raised his motor-cap in acknowledgment. The smart, good-looking young peer had spent a couple of months there during the previous winter and had become immensely popular with the cosmopolitan world who gather annually in the Italian capital. Therefore, when he had arrived at the Excelsior, a week before, word had quickly gone round the hotels, clubs, pastrycooks, andcafésthat the young English motoring milord had returned.Upon the table of his luxurious little sitting-room at the hotel were lying a dozen or so invitations to dinners, receptions, the opera, and a luncheon-party out at Tivoli, while Charles, his man, had been busy spreading some picturesque gossip concerning his master.For the nonce his Highness Prince Albert of Hesse-Holstein wasincognito, and as was the case sometimes, he was passing as an English peer, about whose whereabouts, position, and estates Debrett was somewhat vague. According to that volume of volumes, Lord Nassington had let his ancestral seat in Northamptonshire, and lived in New Orleans. Therefore, his Highness had but little to fear from unwelcome inquiry. He spoke English as perfectly as he could speak German when occasion required, for to his command of languages his success had been in great measure due.Such a fine car as his had seldom, if ever, been seen in Rome. It was part of his creed to make people gossip about him, for as soon as they talked they began to tumble over each other in their endeavour to make his acquaintance. Both Garrett and Charles always had some interesting fiction to impart to other servants, and so filter through to their masters and mistresses.The story running round Rome, and being passed from mouth to mouth along the Corso, in Aregno’s, in the Excelsior, and up among the idlers on the Pincio, was that that reckless devil-may-care young fellow in motor-coat and cap, smoking a cigar as he drove, had only a fortnight before played with maximums at Monte Carlo, and in one day alone had won over forty thousand pounds at roulette.The rather foppishly dressed Italians idling along the Corso—every man a born gambler—were all interested in him as he passed. He was a favourite of fortune, and they envied him his good luck. And though they wore yellow gloves and patent-leather boots they yearned for aternoon the Lotto—the aspiration of every man, be heconteorcontadino.As his lordship approached the end of the long, narrow street close to the Porta del Popolo, Garrett gave him a nudge, and glancing at an oncoming carriage he saw in it two pretty dark-haired girls. One, the better looking of the pair, was about twenty-two, and wore rich sables, with a neat toque of the same fur. The other about three years her senior, wore a black hat, a velvet coat, and a boa of white Arctic fox. Both were delicate, refined-looking girls, and evidently ladies.Nassington raised his cap and laughed, receiving nods and merry laughs of recognition in return.“I wonder where they’re going, Garrett?” he remarked after they had passed.“Better follow them, hadn’t we?” remarked the man.A moment later, however, a humble cab passed, one of those little open victorias which the visitor to Rome knows so well, and in it was seated alone a middle-aged, rather red-faced English clergyman.His lordship and he exchanged glances, but neither recognised each other.“Good!” whispered the man at the wheel to his servant beside him. “So the Parson’s arrived. He hasn’t been long on the way from Berlin. I suppose he’s keeping his eye upon the girls.”“Trust him,” laughed the chauffeur. “You sent him the snap-shot, I suppose?”“Of course. And it seems he’s lost no time. He couldn’t have arrived before five o’clock this morning.”“When Clayton’s on a good thing he moves about as quickly as you do,” the smart young English chauffeur remarked.“Yes,” his master admitted. “He’s the most resourceful man I’ve ever known—and I’ve known a few. We’ll take a run up the Pincio and back,” and, without changing speed, he began to ascend the winding road which leads to the top of the hill.Up there, they found quite a crowd of people whom Nassington had known the previous season.Rome was full of life, merriment and gaiety. Carnival had passed, and the Pasqua was fast approaching; the time when the Roman season is at its gayest and when the hotels are full. The court receptions and balls at the Quirinale had brought the Italian aristocracy from the various cities, and the ambassadors were mostly at their posts because of the weekly diplomatic receptions.Surely it is a strange world—that vain, silly, out-dressing world of Rome, where religion is only the cant of the popular confessor and the scandal of a promenade through St. Peter’s or San Giovanni.At the summit of the Pincio Lord Nassington pulled up the car close to the long stone balustrade, and as he did so a young Italian elegant, the Marquis Carlo di Rimini, stepped up and seizing his hand, was profuse in his welcome back to Rome.The Englishman descended from the car, lit one of his eternal “Petroffs,” and leaned upon the balustrade to chat and learn the latest scandal. The Marquis Carlo and he were fellow members of the Circolo Unione, one of the smartest clubs in Rome, and had played bridge together through many a night.A whisper had once gone forth that the source of the over-dressed young noble’s income was cards, but Nassington had always given him his due. He had never caught him cheating, and surely if he had cheated the Englishman would have known it.As they stood there, gazing across the city below, the sky was aflame in all the crimson glory of the Roman sunset, and even as they spoke the Angelus had, of a sudden, clashed forth from every church tower, the bells clanging discordantly far and near.It was the hour of theventi-tre, but in the city nobody cared. The patient toilers in the Campagna, however, thecontadiniin the fields and in the vineyards who had been working on the brown earth since the dawn, crossed themselves with a murmured prayer to the Madonna and prodded their ox-teams onward. In Rome itself nowadays, alas! the bells of theventi-treof spring and winter only remind the gay, giddy cosmopolitan crowd that it is the hour for tea in the halls of the hotels, or the English tea-rooms in the Corso.An hour later, when his lordship entered his room at the Excelsior, he found the Reverend Thomas Clayton seated in his armchair patiently smoking and awaiting him.“By Jove! old chap. You got through quick,” cried his lordship throwing off his coat and cap. “Well?”“It’s a soft thing—that’s my opinion, the girl Velia is devilish pretty, and the cousin isn’t half bad-looking. I haven’t been idle. Got in at six—an hour late, of course, had a bath and breakfast and out. Saw a dozen people I know before noon, lunched at that littletrattoriabehind the post office where so many of the Deputies go, and learnt a lot. I’m no stranger here you know—lived here a year once—did a splendid bit of business, but had to slip. That was the year before we joined our forces.”“Well, what do you know?”“Boncini, her father is, of course, Minister of the Interior, and a pretty slick customer. Made pots of money, they say, and only keeps in office by bribery. Half the money subscribed by charitable people on behalf of the sufferers from the recent earthquake down in Calabria went into his pocket. He bought a big villa, and fine estate, close to Vallombrosa a month or so afterwards.”His lordship grunted.“Picks up what he can?” he remarked. “One of us—it seems!”“Exactly. And to do any business, we’ll have to be pretty cute. He’s already seen and heard a lot of you, and he knows that you’ve met his pretty daughter. Perhaps he fancies you’ll marry her.”“The only use of marriage to a man, my dear Clayton,” exclaimed the devil-may-care adventurer blowing a cloud of cigarette smoke from his lips, “is to enable him to make a settlement upon his wife, and so wriggle from the clutches of his creditors.” The Parson laughed. Regarding the marriage tie his Highness, or “his lordship” rather as he was at that moment called, was always sarcastic.“Really, old chap, you spread your fame wherever you go. Why, all Rome is talking about this wonderful coup of yours at Monte.”“It was Garrett’s idea. He told them down in the garage, and Charles told a lady’s maid or two, I think. Such things are quite easy when one starts out upon a big bluff. But if what you’ve discovered about his Excellency the Minister Boncini is really true, then I shall alter my tactics somewhat. I mean that I must make the dark-haired daughter a stepping-stone to her father.”“With care—my dear fellow,” exclaimed the Parson in that calm, clerical drawl habitual to him. “The girl’s cousin, Miss Ethel Thorold, is English. The sister of the Signora Boncini married a man on the London Stock Exchange, named Thorold.”“That’s awkward,” exclaimed his lordship thoughtfully, “upsets my plans.”“But he’s dead,” the Parson declared. His companion nodded satisfaction.“Now Miss Ethel is, I’ve found, a rather religiously inclined young person—all praise to her. So I shall succeed very soon in getting to know her. Indeed, as you’ve already made her acquaintance you might introduce me as the vicar of some living within your gift.”“Excellent—I will.”“And what’s your plans?”“They’re my own secrets at present, Tommy,” was the other’s quick answer. “You’re at the Grand, aren’t you? Well, for the present, we must be strangers—till I approach you. Understand?”“Of course. Give me five hundred francs will you. I’m short?”His lordship unlocked his heavy steel despatch-box and gave his friend five one-hundred franc notes without a word.Then they reseated themselves, and with Charles, the faithful valet, leaning against the edge of the table smoking a cigarette with them, their conversation was both interesting and confidential.A fortnight went by, and Rome was in the middle of her Pasquafêtes. The night was perfect, bright and star-lit.The great gilded ballroom of the huge old Peruzzi Palace, in the Via Nazionale, the residence of his Excellency the Minister Boncini, was thronged by a brilliant crowd, among whom Lord Nassington made his way, ever and anon bowing over some woman’s hand.The bright uniforms, the glittering stars and coloured ribbons worn by the men, and the magnificent toilettes of the women combined to form a perfect phantasmagoria of colour beneath the huge crystal electroliers.The political and social world of Rome had gathered there at the monthly reception of his Excellency, the rather stout grey-bearded man with the broad cerise-and-white ribbon of the Order of the Crown of Italy across his shirt-front, and the diamond star upon his coat. His Lordship strode through the huge paintedsalonswith their heavy gilt mirrors and giant palms, and approached the man of power in that complex nation, modern Italy.At that moment his Excellency was chatting with the French Ambassador, but on the Englishman’s approach he turned to him exclaiming in French:“Ah! Lord Nassington! I am so pleased you could come. Velia told me of the slight accident to your car yesterday. I hope you were not hurt at all?”“Oh! no,” laughed the debonair young man. “I had perhaps a close shave. My car is a rather fast one, and I was driving recklessly on the Maremma Road—a sharp turn—and I ran down a bank, that’s all. The car will be all right by to-morrow.”“Ah, milord. The automobile is an invention of the future, without a doubt.”“Most certainly. Indeed, as a matter of fact, I thought of making a suggestion to your Excellency—one which I believe would be most acceptable to the Italian nation. But, of course, here it’s quite impossible to talk.”“Then come to-morrow morning to my private cabinet at the Ministry—or better still, here to luncheon, and we can chat.”His Lordship expressed his thanks, and then moved off in search of the pretty Velia.For the greater part of the evening he dangled at the side of the good-looking girl in turquoise chiffon, having several waltzes with her and afterwards strolling out upon the balcony and sitting there beneath the starlight.“What a charming man your friend Mr Clayton is!” exclaimed the girl in English, as they were sitting together apart from the others. “Papa is delighted with him.”“Oh, yes—a most excellent fellow for a parson,” his Lordship laughed, and then their conversation turned upon motors and motoring.“How is your shoulder this evening?” she inquired.“Not at all painful,” he declared. “It’s nearly all right again. The car will be ready for the road to-morrow afternoon. I’m lunching with you here, and I wonder if you and your cousin will come with me for a run out to Tivoli afterwards?”“I should be delighted,” she said. “Our car is only a sixteen ‘Fiat’ you know, and we never travel faster than a cab. It would be such fun to have a run in your beautiful ‘sixty’! I don’t suppose papa would object.”“I’ll ask him to come, too,” laughed the man by whom she had become so attracted, and then they returned for another dance. Her ears were open, and so were those of the shrewd old man who controlled the internal affairs of the kingdom. There were whisperings everywhere, regarding the young man’s wealth, his good fortune, and his aristocratic family.His Excellency had not failed to notice the attraction which the young English peer held for his daughter, and also that he paid her marked attention. Therefore the old man was extremely self-satisfied.Next day after the little family luncheon at the Peruzzi Palace at which only the Signora Boncini, Velia, and her cousin Ethel were present, his Excellency took his guest aside in his small private room for their coffee and cigarettes.Nassington offered the Minister one of his “Petroffs” which was pronounced excellent.Then, after a brief chat, his Lordship came to the point.“The fact is, your Excellency,” he said, “a suggestion has occurred to me by which the Italian Government could, while benefiting the country to an enormous extent, at the same time secure a very handsome sum annually towards the exchequer.”“How?” inquired the shrewd old statesman.“By granting to a group of substantial English financiers a monopoly for the whole of the motor-transport of Italy,” his Lordship replied, blowing a cloud of smoke from his lips. “You have, in every part of the kingdom, great tracts of productive country without railways or communications. At the same time you have excellent roads everywhere. The concession, if granted, would be taken up by a great firm who handle motor-traction, and certain districts, approved by your government, would be opened up as an experiment. Would not that be of national benefit?”“I see,” replied the statesman stroking his beard thoughtfully. “And you propose that the earnings of the syndicate should be taxed by our Department of Finance?”“Exactly.”A keen, eager look was in the old man’s eyes, and did not pass unrecognised by the man lounging in the armchair in picturesque indolence.“And suppose we were to go into the matter,” the Minister said. “What attitude would your Lordship adopt?”“Well—my attitude would be this,” Nassington replied. “You give me the proper concession, signed by the Ministers, and I guarantee to find the capital among my personal friends in financial circles in London. But on one condition,” he added. “That the whole matter is kept secret. Afterwards, I venture to think the whole country, and especially the rural population will be grateful to your Excellency.”Boncini instantly saw that such a move would increase his popularity immensely in the country. The idea appealed to him. If Lord Nassington’s friends were ready with capital, they would also be ready, he foresaw, with a very substantial sum for bribery. Personally he cared not a rap for the progress of Italy. While in office, he intended to amass as much as he could. He was the all-powerful man in Italy at the moment. But next year he might be—well where more than one Minister as powerful as he, had found himself—in prison!“There are difficulties,” his Excellency said with some hesitation. “My colleagues in the Cabinet may raise objections. They may not see matters in the light that I do. And the Senate, too—they—”“I know. I quite understand your Excellency,” exclaimed his Lordship, lowering his voice into a confidential whisper. “Let us speak quite frankly. In a gigantic matter of this sort—a matter of millions—certain palm-oil has to be applied—eh?”The old man smiled, placed his hands together and nodded.“Then let us go further,” Lord Nassington went on. “I submit in all deference—and, of course, this conversation is strictly in private between us, that should you think favourably of the scheme—my friends should secretly place a certain sum, say one hundred thousand pounds sterling at your Excellency’s command, to apply in whatever way you may think best to secure the success of the proposition. Are you willing?”The old man rose from his chair, and standing before the younger man stretched forth his hand.“Perfectly,” he said as the other grasped it. “We agree.”“And if I frame the form of the concession you will agree to it and, in return for an undertaking of the payment of one hundred thousand pounds into—where shall we say—into the head office of the Credit Lyonnais in Paris in the name of your nominee, you will hand me the legal concession confirmed by the Italian Government?”“I agree to hand you the necessary documents within a fortnight,” responded his Excellency. “The adoption of motor-traction in the remote districts for bringing wine and produce to the nearest railways will be of the greatest boon to our country.”“Of course, my friends will leave the whole of the details, as far as finance on your side is concerned, to you,” his Lordship said. “You can administer the official backsheesh so much better than any one else.”“Within a fortnight you shall be able, my lord, to hand your friends the actual concession for motor-transport throughout the kingdom of Italy.”For another half-hour they discussed certain details, Lord Nassington talking big about his wealthy friends in London. Then, with his daughter and his niece, his Excellency accepted his guest’s invitation for a run out to Tivoli to take tea.The “sixty” ran splendidly, and the Minister of the Interior was delighted. Before the girls, however, no business was discussed. Velia’s father, who, by the way had once been a clever advocate in Milan, knew better than to mention affairs of State before women.During the run, however, he found himself counting upon the possibilities of Velia’s marriage with the amiable young English aristocrat who, upon his own initiative, had offered to place one hundred thousand sterling unreservedly in his hands. At most the present Cabinet could last another year, and then—well, oblivion if before then he did not line his nest snugly enough. The thought of the poor widows and orphans and starving populace down in Calabria sometimes caused him a twinge of conscience. But he only laughed and placed it aside. He had even been unscrupulous, and this young English peer was his friend, he would use to best advantage.Though Lord Nassington was an eligible husband for his daughter, yet, after all, he was not a business man, but a wealthy “mug.” As such he intended to treat him.At the littlecafé, near the falls, where they took tea the conversation ran on motors and motoring, but his Excellency could not disguise from himself that the young peer was entirely fascinated by his good-looking daughter.They lingered there until the mists began to rise and the red afterglow was fast disappearing; then they ran past the sulphur springs and on the broad highway back to the Eternal City at such a pace that his Excellency’s breath was taken away. But Lord Nassington drove, and notwithstanding the accident of two days previously, the Minister felt himself perfectly safe in his hands.Three weeks went by. His Lordship took a flying visit to London, and quickly returned. Both he and the highly respectable clergyman of the English church, the Reverend Thomas Clayton, became daily visitors at the Peruzzi Palace. In the Corso the pretty Signorina Boncini and her cousin were often seen in his Lordship’s car, and already the gossip-loving world of Rome began to whisper that an engagement was about to take place.The valet, Charles, also made a quick journey to London and back, and many telegrams were exchanged with a registered cable address in London.One afternoon, in the private cabinet of that colossal building, the Ministry of the Interior, his Excellency handed his English friend a formidable document bearing many signatures with the official seal of the Government embossed, a document which gave Lord Nassington the exclusive right to establish motor-transport for both merchandise and passengers upon every highway in the kingdom. In exchange, his Excellency received an undertaking signed by a responsible firm in the City of London to place to the account of Madame Boncini at the Credit Lyonnais in Paris the respectable sum of one hundred thousand pounds within seven days.“I shall return at once to London,” his Lordship said replacing the formidable document in its envelope, “and in exchange for this, the financial group will at once pay in the sum to Madame’s account in Paris, while the actual sum for the concession will be paid here, in Rome, to the Department of Finance, on the date stipulated.”“Benissimo,” replied the grey-bearded statesman, holding one of his long Toscano cigars in the candle which he had lit for that purpose. “It is all settled. You will dine with us at home to-night.”His Lordship accepted, and after further discussion regarding several minor details of the concession he rose and left.That night he dined at the Peruzzi Palace, seated next his Excellency’s charming daughter, and next morning left the Excelsior in his big red car, to run as far as Bologna and thence return to London by rail.With her father’s consent Velia her cousin and Signora Ciullini, her aunt, accompanied him and they set out across the Maremma for marble-built Pisa, where the girls were to return home by rail.The more direct road was by Orvieto, but it is not so good as that wide, open road across the fever-marshes of the Maremma, therefore his Lordship resolved on taking the latter.The day was glorious, and travelling for all they were worth with only two stops to refill with petrol, they ran into Pisa late that same night. The sleeping-car express from Paris to Rome was due in half an hour, therefore after a scrambling meal at the Victoria the aristocratic motorist saw the girls and their aunt safely into the train—kissing Velia in secret by the way—and waving them “addio,” watched the train glide out of the big echoing station again.Then, with Garrett at his side, he turned the big car with its glaring head-lights out of the big gates through the town along the Lung’ Arno and into the high road for Florence.In the early morning he passed through the dimly-lit deserted streets of the City of the Medici, and away beyond, through Prato, to the foot-hills of the Appenines where he began to ascend that wonderfully engineered military road which runs, with many dangerous turns for motorists, high up across the mountain range, and ends in the long colonnaded street of old Bologna.It was noon ere he drew into the Piazza before the station, and giving Garrett instructions to continue on to Milan and north to Berlin where the car was to be garaged, he took the afternoon express for the frontier at Chiasso, travelling thenceviaBâle to Ostend and London.On entering his snug chambers at five o’clock one afternoon, he found Charles and the Parson smoking and awaiting him. That evening the trio held a long and earnest consultation. The official document was carefully examined, and the names of many city firms mentioned. The Parson seemed to possess a remarkable intimate knowledge of city life.“Old Boncini is a clever old thief,” remarked the reverend gentleman. “He’s feathering his nest finely—all the money in his wife’s name.”“My dear fellow, half the Cabinet Ministers of Europe only use their political influence in order to gain fortune. Except the British Government there isn’t a single one which isn’t corrupt.”“Well, Albert, my dear boy, you certainly seem to have got hold of a good thing,” the Parson remarked. “His Corrupt Excellency seems to place every faith in you. Your four-flush was admirable all the time.”“It took a bit of working, I can tell you. He’s as slick as a rat.”“But he doesn’t suspect anything wrong?”“Hasn’t the slightest idea of it, my dear Tommy. He fancies I’m going to marry his daughter. The fat old mother is already imagining herself mother-in-law of a British peer.”“Yes. All Rome knows that you’ve fallen in love with the pretty Velia, and that you’ve told her the tale. What a fellow you are with the ladies.”“Why?” he laughed taking a cigarette. “They are all very charming and delightful. But in my career I generally manage to make them useful. It’s really remarkable what a woman will do in the interests of the man whom she fancies is in love with her. Fortunately, perhaps, for me, I’ve only been in love once.”“And it resulted in a tragedy,” remarked the Parson quietly, knowing that he referred to the Princess.His Lordship sighed, flinging himself down in his armchair, worn out by long travel.“My dear boy,” he said with a weary sigh, “if I ever got married I’d soon go mothy—everybody does. Married people, whatever their position in life, settle down into the monotonous groove that is the death of all romance. Before a man marries a girl they have little dinners together at restaurants, and little suppers, and all seems so bright and gay under the red candle-shades. We see it on every hand. But why should it all be dropped for heavy meals and dulness, just because two people who like one another have the marriage service read over them?”The Parson laughed. His friend was always amusing when he discussed the question of matrimony.During the next four days his Lordship, in the character of Mr Tremlett—as he was known in certain circles in the City—was busy with financiers to whom he offered the concession. His story was that it had been granted by the Italian Government to his cousin, Lord Nassington, and that the latter had given it into his hands to negotiate.In the various quarters where he offered it the concession caused a flutter of excitement. The shrewdest men in the City saw that it was a good thing, and one after the other craved a day to think it over. It really was one of the best things that had been offered for a long time. The terms required by the Italian Government were not at all heavy, and huge profits were certain to be made out of such a monopoly.The great tracts of fertile land in central and southern Italy would, by means of motor-transport, be opened up to trade, while Tremlett’s picturesque story of how the concession had been snatched away from a strong group of German financiers was, to more than one capitalist, most fascinating.Indeed he saw half a dozen of the most influential men in the City, and before a week was out he had got together a syndicate which could command a couple of millions sterling.They were all of them shrewd men, however, and he saw that it behoved him to be on the alert. There is such a thing in the City as to be “frozen out” of a good thing, even when one holds it in one’s hand.By dint of close watching and clever observation, he discovered something, and this caused him to ponder deeply. The syndicate expressed themselves ready to treat, but for the present he was rather unwilling.Some hitches occurred on technicalities, and there were a number of meetings to consider this point and that. By all this Mr Tremlett saw that he was losing time, and at the same moment he was not keeping faith with the old statesman concerning the amount to be paid into Madame’s account in Paris. At last one morning, after the Parson had left for an unknown destination, he took a taxi-cab down to the City with a bold resolve.The five prominent financiers were seated together in an office in Old Broad Street when Mr Tremlett, leaning back in his chair, said:“Well, gentlemen, it seems that we are as far away as ever from coming to terms, and I think it useless to discuss the matter further. I must take the business elsewhere.”“We admit,” exclaimed an old bald man, a director of one of London’s largest banks, “that it is a good thing, but the price you ask is prohibitive.”“I can get it in Paris. So I shall go there,” was Tremlett’s prompt reply.“Well,” exclaimed the bald man, “let’s get straight to facts. Your cousin, Lord Nassington, wants sixty thousand pounds in cash for the concession and a percentage of shares, and that, we have decided, is far too much.”“Those are his figures,” remarked Tremlett.“Well, then all we can offer is one-half—thirty thousand in cash and ten per cent, of shares in the company,” said the other, “and,” he added, “I venture to say that ours is a very handsome offer.” Tremlett rose from the table with a sarcastic smile.“Let us talk of something else,” he said. “I haven’t come down here to the City to play at marbles.”“Well,” asked the old man who was head of the syndicate. “What are your lowest terms?”“I’ve stated them.”“But you don’t give us time to inquire into the business,” he complained.“I have shown you the actual concession. Surely you are satisfied with it!”“We are.”“And I’ve told you the conditions of the contract. Yet you postpone your decision from day to day!”The five men glanced at each other, rather uneasily Tremlett thought.“Well,” he went on. “This is the last time I shall attend any meeting. We come to a decision this morning, or the matter is off. You, gentlemen, don’t even showbona fides!”“Well, I think you know something of the standing of all of us,” the banker said.“That is so. But my cousin complains that he, having offered the concession, you on your part do not attempt to show your intention to take it up.”“But we do. We wish to fix a price to-day,” remarked another of the men.“A price, gentlemen, which is ridiculous,” declared Tremlett.The five men consulted together in undertones, and in the end advanced their offer five thousand pounds. At this Tremlett only shook his shoulders. A further five thousand was the result, and a long discussion followed.“Have you your cousin’s authority to accept terms?” asked one of the capitalists.“I have.”“Then forty thousand is all we can offer.”Tremlett hesitated.“I have a number of payments to make for bribery,” he declared. “It will take half that sum.”“That does not concern us, my dear sir,” said the bald-headed banker. “We know that a concession such as this can only be obtained by the judicious application of palm-oil.”“But I must pay out nearly twenty thousand almost immediately,” Tremlett said.At this there was another long discussion, whereupon at last the bald-headed man said:“If the payment of the bribes is imperative at once, we will, on consideration of the business being to-day concluded on a forty thousand pound basis, hand you over half the sum at once. That is our final decision.”Tremlett was not at all anxious. Indeed he took up his hat and cane, and was about to leave, when two of the men present exercising all their powers of persuasion, got him at last to reseat himself and to accept the sum of twenty thousand pounds down, and twenty thousand thirty days from that date, in addition to a percentage of shares in the company to be formed.Memoranda were drawn up and signed by all parties, whereupon Tremlett took from his pocket the official concession and handed it to the head of the syndicate.That same afternoon, before four o’clock, he had received a draft for twenty thousand pounds, with which he had opened an account in Charles’s name at a branch bank in Tottenham Court Road.At nine o’clock that same evening he left for Paris, putting up at a small obscure hotel near the Gare du Nord where he waited in patience for nearly a week.Once or twice he telegraphed, and received replies.Late one night the Parson arrived unexpectedly and entered the shabby bedroom where his Lordship was lounging in an armchair reading a French novel.He sprung up at the entrance of the round-faced cleric, saying:“Well, Tommy? How has it gone? Tell me quick.”“You were quite right,” exclaimed the clergyman. “The crowd in London were going behind your back. They sent two clever men to Rome, and those fellows tried to deal with Boncini direct. They arrived the day after I did, and they offered him an extra twenty thousand if he would rescind your concession, and grant them a new one. Boncini was too avaricious and refused, so they then treated with you.”“I got twenty thousand,” remarked his Lordship, “got it in cash safe in the bank.”“Yes. I got your wire.”“And what did you do?” asked his friend.“I acted just as you ordered. As soon as I was convinced that the people in London were working behind our backs, I laid my plans. Then when your wire came that you’d netted the twenty thousand, I acted.”“How?”“I took all the signed proof you gave me of old Boncini’s acceptance of the bribe, and of Madame’s banking account at the Credit Lyonnais, to that scoundrel Ricci, the red-hot Socialist deputy in the Chamber.”“And what did he say?” asked his Lordship breathlessly.“Say!” echoed the other. “He was delighted. I spent the whole evening with him. Next day, he and his colleagues held a meeting, and that afternoon he asked in the Chamber whether his Excellency, the Minister of the Interior, had not been bribed by an English syndicate and put a number of similarly awkward questions. The Government had a difficulty in evading the truth, but imagine the sensation when he waved proofs of the corruptness of the Cabinet in the face of the House. A terrible scene of disorder ensued, and the greatest sensation has been caused. Look here,”—and he handed his friend a copy ofLe Soir.At the head of a column on the front page were the words in French, “Cabinet Crisis in Italy,” and beneath, a telegram from Rome announcing that in consequence of the exposure of grave scandals by the Socialists, the Italian Cabinet had placed their resignations in the hands of his Majesty.“Serve that old thief Boncini right,” declared his Lordship. “He was ready to sell me for an extra few thousands, but I fortunately got in before him. I wonder if the pretty Velia has still any aspirations to enter the British peerage?”And both men laughed merrily at thought of the nice little nest-egg they had managed to filch so cleverly from the hands of five of the smartest financiers in the City of London.
Lord Nassington drove his big red sixty horse-power six-cylinder “Napier” slowly up the Corso in Rome.
By his side was his smart chauffeur, Garrett, in dark-green livery with the hand holding a garland proper, the crest of the Nassingtons, upon his bright buttons.
It was four o’clock, the hour of thepasseggiata, the hour when those wintering in the Eternal City go forth in carriages and cars to drive up and down the long, narrow Corso in order to see, and be seen, to exchange bows with each other, and to conclude the processional drive at slow pace owing to the crowded state of the street by a tour of the Pincian hill whence one obtains a magnificent view of Rome and the Tiber in the sunset.
Roman society is the most exclusive in the world. Your Roman princess will usually take her airing in her brougham with the windows carefully closed, even on a warm spring afternoon. She holds herself aloof from the crowd of wealthy foreigners, even though her great gaunt palazzo has been denuded of every picture and work of art years ago, and she lives with adonna di casain four or five meagre rooms on the first floor, the remainder of the great place being unfurnished and untenanted.
There is more pitiful make-believe among the aristocracy of Rome than in any other city in the world. The old principessa, the marchesa, and the contessa keep themselves within their own little circle, and sneer at the wealthy foreigner and his blatant display of riches. One hears girls of the school-room discussing the social scale of passers-by, and disregarding them as not being “of the aristocracy” like themselves.
Truly the Eternal City is a complex one in winter, and the Corso at four o’clock, is the centre of it all. You know that slowly-passing almost funereal line of carriages, some of them very old and almost hearse-like, moving up and down, half of them emblazoned with coronets and shields—for the Italian is ever proud of his heraldry—while the other half hired conveyances, many of them ordinary cabs in which sit some of the wealthiest men and women in Europe who have come south to see the antiquities and to enjoy the sunshine.
Behind the lumbering old-fashioned brougham of a weedy marchesa, Lord Nassington drove his big powerful car at snail’s pace, and almost silently. In such traffic the flexibility of the six-cylinder is at once appreciated.
Both Garrett and his master had their eyes about them, as though in search of some one.
A dozen times pretty women in furs bowed to Lord Nassington, who raised his motor-cap in acknowledgment. The smart, good-looking young peer had spent a couple of months there during the previous winter and had become immensely popular with the cosmopolitan world who gather annually in the Italian capital. Therefore, when he had arrived at the Excelsior, a week before, word had quickly gone round the hotels, clubs, pastrycooks, andcafésthat the young English motoring milord had returned.
Upon the table of his luxurious little sitting-room at the hotel were lying a dozen or so invitations to dinners, receptions, the opera, and a luncheon-party out at Tivoli, while Charles, his man, had been busy spreading some picturesque gossip concerning his master.
For the nonce his Highness Prince Albert of Hesse-Holstein wasincognito, and as was the case sometimes, he was passing as an English peer, about whose whereabouts, position, and estates Debrett was somewhat vague. According to that volume of volumes, Lord Nassington had let his ancestral seat in Northamptonshire, and lived in New Orleans. Therefore, his Highness had but little to fear from unwelcome inquiry. He spoke English as perfectly as he could speak German when occasion required, for to his command of languages his success had been in great measure due.
Such a fine car as his had seldom, if ever, been seen in Rome. It was part of his creed to make people gossip about him, for as soon as they talked they began to tumble over each other in their endeavour to make his acquaintance. Both Garrett and Charles always had some interesting fiction to impart to other servants, and so filter through to their masters and mistresses.
The story running round Rome, and being passed from mouth to mouth along the Corso, in Aregno’s, in the Excelsior, and up among the idlers on the Pincio, was that that reckless devil-may-care young fellow in motor-coat and cap, smoking a cigar as he drove, had only a fortnight before played with maximums at Monte Carlo, and in one day alone had won over forty thousand pounds at roulette.
The rather foppishly dressed Italians idling along the Corso—every man a born gambler—were all interested in him as he passed. He was a favourite of fortune, and they envied him his good luck. And though they wore yellow gloves and patent-leather boots they yearned for aternoon the Lotto—the aspiration of every man, be heconteorcontadino.
As his lordship approached the end of the long, narrow street close to the Porta del Popolo, Garrett gave him a nudge, and glancing at an oncoming carriage he saw in it two pretty dark-haired girls. One, the better looking of the pair, was about twenty-two, and wore rich sables, with a neat toque of the same fur. The other about three years her senior, wore a black hat, a velvet coat, and a boa of white Arctic fox. Both were delicate, refined-looking girls, and evidently ladies.
Nassington raised his cap and laughed, receiving nods and merry laughs of recognition in return.
“I wonder where they’re going, Garrett?” he remarked after they had passed.
“Better follow them, hadn’t we?” remarked the man.
A moment later, however, a humble cab passed, one of those little open victorias which the visitor to Rome knows so well, and in it was seated alone a middle-aged, rather red-faced English clergyman.
His lordship and he exchanged glances, but neither recognised each other.
“Good!” whispered the man at the wheel to his servant beside him. “So the Parson’s arrived. He hasn’t been long on the way from Berlin. I suppose he’s keeping his eye upon the girls.”
“Trust him,” laughed the chauffeur. “You sent him the snap-shot, I suppose?”
“Of course. And it seems he’s lost no time. He couldn’t have arrived before five o’clock this morning.”
“When Clayton’s on a good thing he moves about as quickly as you do,” the smart young English chauffeur remarked.
“Yes,” his master admitted. “He’s the most resourceful man I’ve ever known—and I’ve known a few. We’ll take a run up the Pincio and back,” and, without changing speed, he began to ascend the winding road which leads to the top of the hill.
Up there, they found quite a crowd of people whom Nassington had known the previous season.
Rome was full of life, merriment and gaiety. Carnival had passed, and the Pasqua was fast approaching; the time when the Roman season is at its gayest and when the hotels are full. The court receptions and balls at the Quirinale had brought the Italian aristocracy from the various cities, and the ambassadors were mostly at their posts because of the weekly diplomatic receptions.
Surely it is a strange world—that vain, silly, out-dressing world of Rome, where religion is only the cant of the popular confessor and the scandal of a promenade through St. Peter’s or San Giovanni.
At the summit of the Pincio Lord Nassington pulled up the car close to the long stone balustrade, and as he did so a young Italian elegant, the Marquis Carlo di Rimini, stepped up and seizing his hand, was profuse in his welcome back to Rome.
The Englishman descended from the car, lit one of his eternal “Petroffs,” and leaned upon the balustrade to chat and learn the latest scandal. The Marquis Carlo and he were fellow members of the Circolo Unione, one of the smartest clubs in Rome, and had played bridge together through many a night.
A whisper had once gone forth that the source of the over-dressed young noble’s income was cards, but Nassington had always given him his due. He had never caught him cheating, and surely if he had cheated the Englishman would have known it.
As they stood there, gazing across the city below, the sky was aflame in all the crimson glory of the Roman sunset, and even as they spoke the Angelus had, of a sudden, clashed forth from every church tower, the bells clanging discordantly far and near.
It was the hour of theventi-tre, but in the city nobody cared. The patient toilers in the Campagna, however, thecontadiniin the fields and in the vineyards who had been working on the brown earth since the dawn, crossed themselves with a murmured prayer to the Madonna and prodded their ox-teams onward. In Rome itself nowadays, alas! the bells of theventi-treof spring and winter only remind the gay, giddy cosmopolitan crowd that it is the hour for tea in the halls of the hotels, or the English tea-rooms in the Corso.
An hour later, when his lordship entered his room at the Excelsior, he found the Reverend Thomas Clayton seated in his armchair patiently smoking and awaiting him.
“By Jove! old chap. You got through quick,” cried his lordship throwing off his coat and cap. “Well?”
“It’s a soft thing—that’s my opinion, the girl Velia is devilish pretty, and the cousin isn’t half bad-looking. I haven’t been idle. Got in at six—an hour late, of course, had a bath and breakfast and out. Saw a dozen people I know before noon, lunched at that littletrattoriabehind the post office where so many of the Deputies go, and learnt a lot. I’m no stranger here you know—lived here a year once—did a splendid bit of business, but had to slip. That was the year before we joined our forces.”
“Well, what do you know?”
“Boncini, her father is, of course, Minister of the Interior, and a pretty slick customer. Made pots of money, they say, and only keeps in office by bribery. Half the money subscribed by charitable people on behalf of the sufferers from the recent earthquake down in Calabria went into his pocket. He bought a big villa, and fine estate, close to Vallombrosa a month or so afterwards.”
His lordship grunted.
“Picks up what he can?” he remarked. “One of us—it seems!”
“Exactly. And to do any business, we’ll have to be pretty cute. He’s already seen and heard a lot of you, and he knows that you’ve met his pretty daughter. Perhaps he fancies you’ll marry her.”
“The only use of marriage to a man, my dear Clayton,” exclaimed the devil-may-care adventurer blowing a cloud of cigarette smoke from his lips, “is to enable him to make a settlement upon his wife, and so wriggle from the clutches of his creditors.” The Parson laughed. Regarding the marriage tie his Highness, or “his lordship” rather as he was at that moment called, was always sarcastic.
“Really, old chap, you spread your fame wherever you go. Why, all Rome is talking about this wonderful coup of yours at Monte.”
“It was Garrett’s idea. He told them down in the garage, and Charles told a lady’s maid or two, I think. Such things are quite easy when one starts out upon a big bluff. But if what you’ve discovered about his Excellency the Minister Boncini is really true, then I shall alter my tactics somewhat. I mean that I must make the dark-haired daughter a stepping-stone to her father.”
“With care—my dear fellow,” exclaimed the Parson in that calm, clerical drawl habitual to him. “The girl’s cousin, Miss Ethel Thorold, is English. The sister of the Signora Boncini married a man on the London Stock Exchange, named Thorold.”
“That’s awkward,” exclaimed his lordship thoughtfully, “upsets my plans.”
“But he’s dead,” the Parson declared. His companion nodded satisfaction.
“Now Miss Ethel is, I’ve found, a rather religiously inclined young person—all praise to her. So I shall succeed very soon in getting to know her. Indeed, as you’ve already made her acquaintance you might introduce me as the vicar of some living within your gift.”
“Excellent—I will.”
“And what’s your plans?”
“They’re my own secrets at present, Tommy,” was the other’s quick answer. “You’re at the Grand, aren’t you? Well, for the present, we must be strangers—till I approach you. Understand?”
“Of course. Give me five hundred francs will you. I’m short?”
His lordship unlocked his heavy steel despatch-box and gave his friend five one-hundred franc notes without a word.
Then they reseated themselves, and with Charles, the faithful valet, leaning against the edge of the table smoking a cigarette with them, their conversation was both interesting and confidential.
A fortnight went by, and Rome was in the middle of her Pasquafêtes. The night was perfect, bright and star-lit.
The great gilded ballroom of the huge old Peruzzi Palace, in the Via Nazionale, the residence of his Excellency the Minister Boncini, was thronged by a brilliant crowd, among whom Lord Nassington made his way, ever and anon bowing over some woman’s hand.
The bright uniforms, the glittering stars and coloured ribbons worn by the men, and the magnificent toilettes of the women combined to form a perfect phantasmagoria of colour beneath the huge crystal electroliers.
The political and social world of Rome had gathered there at the monthly reception of his Excellency, the rather stout grey-bearded man with the broad cerise-and-white ribbon of the Order of the Crown of Italy across his shirt-front, and the diamond star upon his coat. His Lordship strode through the huge paintedsalonswith their heavy gilt mirrors and giant palms, and approached the man of power in that complex nation, modern Italy.
At that moment his Excellency was chatting with the French Ambassador, but on the Englishman’s approach he turned to him exclaiming in French:
“Ah! Lord Nassington! I am so pleased you could come. Velia told me of the slight accident to your car yesterday. I hope you were not hurt at all?”
“Oh! no,” laughed the debonair young man. “I had perhaps a close shave. My car is a rather fast one, and I was driving recklessly on the Maremma Road—a sharp turn—and I ran down a bank, that’s all. The car will be all right by to-morrow.”
“Ah, milord. The automobile is an invention of the future, without a doubt.”
“Most certainly. Indeed, as a matter of fact, I thought of making a suggestion to your Excellency—one which I believe would be most acceptable to the Italian nation. But, of course, here it’s quite impossible to talk.”
“Then come to-morrow morning to my private cabinet at the Ministry—or better still, here to luncheon, and we can chat.”
His Lordship expressed his thanks, and then moved off in search of the pretty Velia.
For the greater part of the evening he dangled at the side of the good-looking girl in turquoise chiffon, having several waltzes with her and afterwards strolling out upon the balcony and sitting there beneath the starlight.
“What a charming man your friend Mr Clayton is!” exclaimed the girl in English, as they were sitting together apart from the others. “Papa is delighted with him.”
“Oh, yes—a most excellent fellow for a parson,” his Lordship laughed, and then their conversation turned upon motors and motoring.
“How is your shoulder this evening?” she inquired.
“Not at all painful,” he declared. “It’s nearly all right again. The car will be ready for the road to-morrow afternoon. I’m lunching with you here, and I wonder if you and your cousin will come with me for a run out to Tivoli afterwards?”
“I should be delighted,” she said. “Our car is only a sixteen ‘Fiat’ you know, and we never travel faster than a cab. It would be such fun to have a run in your beautiful ‘sixty’! I don’t suppose papa would object.”
“I’ll ask him to come, too,” laughed the man by whom she had become so attracted, and then they returned for another dance. Her ears were open, and so were those of the shrewd old man who controlled the internal affairs of the kingdom. There were whisperings everywhere, regarding the young man’s wealth, his good fortune, and his aristocratic family.
His Excellency had not failed to notice the attraction which the young English peer held for his daughter, and also that he paid her marked attention. Therefore the old man was extremely self-satisfied.
Next day after the little family luncheon at the Peruzzi Palace at which only the Signora Boncini, Velia, and her cousin Ethel were present, his Excellency took his guest aside in his small private room for their coffee and cigarettes.
Nassington offered the Minister one of his “Petroffs” which was pronounced excellent.
Then, after a brief chat, his Lordship came to the point.
“The fact is, your Excellency,” he said, “a suggestion has occurred to me by which the Italian Government could, while benefiting the country to an enormous extent, at the same time secure a very handsome sum annually towards the exchequer.”
“How?” inquired the shrewd old statesman.
“By granting to a group of substantial English financiers a monopoly for the whole of the motor-transport of Italy,” his Lordship replied, blowing a cloud of smoke from his lips. “You have, in every part of the kingdom, great tracts of productive country without railways or communications. At the same time you have excellent roads everywhere. The concession, if granted, would be taken up by a great firm who handle motor-traction, and certain districts, approved by your government, would be opened up as an experiment. Would not that be of national benefit?”
“I see,” replied the statesman stroking his beard thoughtfully. “And you propose that the earnings of the syndicate should be taxed by our Department of Finance?”
“Exactly.”
A keen, eager look was in the old man’s eyes, and did not pass unrecognised by the man lounging in the armchair in picturesque indolence.
“And suppose we were to go into the matter,” the Minister said. “What attitude would your Lordship adopt?”
“Well—my attitude would be this,” Nassington replied. “You give me the proper concession, signed by the Ministers, and I guarantee to find the capital among my personal friends in financial circles in London. But on one condition,” he added. “That the whole matter is kept secret. Afterwards, I venture to think the whole country, and especially the rural population will be grateful to your Excellency.”
Boncini instantly saw that such a move would increase his popularity immensely in the country. The idea appealed to him. If Lord Nassington’s friends were ready with capital, they would also be ready, he foresaw, with a very substantial sum for bribery. Personally he cared not a rap for the progress of Italy. While in office, he intended to amass as much as he could. He was the all-powerful man in Italy at the moment. But next year he might be—well where more than one Minister as powerful as he, had found himself—in prison!
“There are difficulties,” his Excellency said with some hesitation. “My colleagues in the Cabinet may raise objections. They may not see matters in the light that I do. And the Senate, too—they—”
“I know. I quite understand your Excellency,” exclaimed his Lordship, lowering his voice into a confidential whisper. “Let us speak quite frankly. In a gigantic matter of this sort—a matter of millions—certain palm-oil has to be applied—eh?”
The old man smiled, placed his hands together and nodded.
“Then let us go further,” Lord Nassington went on. “I submit in all deference—and, of course, this conversation is strictly in private between us, that should you think favourably of the scheme—my friends should secretly place a certain sum, say one hundred thousand pounds sterling at your Excellency’s command, to apply in whatever way you may think best to secure the success of the proposition. Are you willing?”
The old man rose from his chair, and standing before the younger man stretched forth his hand.
“Perfectly,” he said as the other grasped it. “We agree.”
“And if I frame the form of the concession you will agree to it and, in return for an undertaking of the payment of one hundred thousand pounds into—where shall we say—into the head office of the Credit Lyonnais in Paris in the name of your nominee, you will hand me the legal concession confirmed by the Italian Government?”
“I agree to hand you the necessary documents within a fortnight,” responded his Excellency. “The adoption of motor-traction in the remote districts for bringing wine and produce to the nearest railways will be of the greatest boon to our country.”
“Of course, my friends will leave the whole of the details, as far as finance on your side is concerned, to you,” his Lordship said. “You can administer the official backsheesh so much better than any one else.”
“Within a fortnight you shall be able, my lord, to hand your friends the actual concession for motor-transport throughout the kingdom of Italy.”
For another half-hour they discussed certain details, Lord Nassington talking big about his wealthy friends in London. Then, with his daughter and his niece, his Excellency accepted his guest’s invitation for a run out to Tivoli to take tea.
The “sixty” ran splendidly, and the Minister of the Interior was delighted. Before the girls, however, no business was discussed. Velia’s father, who, by the way had once been a clever advocate in Milan, knew better than to mention affairs of State before women.
During the run, however, he found himself counting upon the possibilities of Velia’s marriage with the amiable young English aristocrat who, upon his own initiative, had offered to place one hundred thousand sterling unreservedly in his hands. At most the present Cabinet could last another year, and then—well, oblivion if before then he did not line his nest snugly enough. The thought of the poor widows and orphans and starving populace down in Calabria sometimes caused him a twinge of conscience. But he only laughed and placed it aside. He had even been unscrupulous, and this young English peer was his friend, he would use to best advantage.
Though Lord Nassington was an eligible husband for his daughter, yet, after all, he was not a business man, but a wealthy “mug.” As such he intended to treat him.
At the littlecafé, near the falls, where they took tea the conversation ran on motors and motoring, but his Excellency could not disguise from himself that the young peer was entirely fascinated by his good-looking daughter.
They lingered there until the mists began to rise and the red afterglow was fast disappearing; then they ran past the sulphur springs and on the broad highway back to the Eternal City at such a pace that his Excellency’s breath was taken away. But Lord Nassington drove, and notwithstanding the accident of two days previously, the Minister felt himself perfectly safe in his hands.
Three weeks went by. His Lordship took a flying visit to London, and quickly returned. Both he and the highly respectable clergyman of the English church, the Reverend Thomas Clayton, became daily visitors at the Peruzzi Palace. In the Corso the pretty Signorina Boncini and her cousin were often seen in his Lordship’s car, and already the gossip-loving world of Rome began to whisper that an engagement was about to take place.
The valet, Charles, also made a quick journey to London and back, and many telegrams were exchanged with a registered cable address in London.
One afternoon, in the private cabinet of that colossal building, the Ministry of the Interior, his Excellency handed his English friend a formidable document bearing many signatures with the official seal of the Government embossed, a document which gave Lord Nassington the exclusive right to establish motor-transport for both merchandise and passengers upon every highway in the kingdom. In exchange, his Excellency received an undertaking signed by a responsible firm in the City of London to place to the account of Madame Boncini at the Credit Lyonnais in Paris the respectable sum of one hundred thousand pounds within seven days.
“I shall return at once to London,” his Lordship said replacing the formidable document in its envelope, “and in exchange for this, the financial group will at once pay in the sum to Madame’s account in Paris, while the actual sum for the concession will be paid here, in Rome, to the Department of Finance, on the date stipulated.”
“Benissimo,” replied the grey-bearded statesman, holding one of his long Toscano cigars in the candle which he had lit for that purpose. “It is all settled. You will dine with us at home to-night.”
His Lordship accepted, and after further discussion regarding several minor details of the concession he rose and left.
That night he dined at the Peruzzi Palace, seated next his Excellency’s charming daughter, and next morning left the Excelsior in his big red car, to run as far as Bologna and thence return to London by rail.
With her father’s consent Velia her cousin and Signora Ciullini, her aunt, accompanied him and they set out across the Maremma for marble-built Pisa, where the girls were to return home by rail.
The more direct road was by Orvieto, but it is not so good as that wide, open road across the fever-marshes of the Maremma, therefore his Lordship resolved on taking the latter.
The day was glorious, and travelling for all they were worth with only two stops to refill with petrol, they ran into Pisa late that same night. The sleeping-car express from Paris to Rome was due in half an hour, therefore after a scrambling meal at the Victoria the aristocratic motorist saw the girls and their aunt safely into the train—kissing Velia in secret by the way—and waving them “addio,” watched the train glide out of the big echoing station again.
Then, with Garrett at his side, he turned the big car with its glaring head-lights out of the big gates through the town along the Lung’ Arno and into the high road for Florence.
In the early morning he passed through the dimly-lit deserted streets of the City of the Medici, and away beyond, through Prato, to the foot-hills of the Appenines where he began to ascend that wonderfully engineered military road which runs, with many dangerous turns for motorists, high up across the mountain range, and ends in the long colonnaded street of old Bologna.
It was noon ere he drew into the Piazza before the station, and giving Garrett instructions to continue on to Milan and north to Berlin where the car was to be garaged, he took the afternoon express for the frontier at Chiasso, travelling thenceviaBâle to Ostend and London.
On entering his snug chambers at five o’clock one afternoon, he found Charles and the Parson smoking and awaiting him. That evening the trio held a long and earnest consultation. The official document was carefully examined, and the names of many city firms mentioned. The Parson seemed to possess a remarkable intimate knowledge of city life.
“Old Boncini is a clever old thief,” remarked the reverend gentleman. “He’s feathering his nest finely—all the money in his wife’s name.”
“My dear fellow, half the Cabinet Ministers of Europe only use their political influence in order to gain fortune. Except the British Government there isn’t a single one which isn’t corrupt.”
“Well, Albert, my dear boy, you certainly seem to have got hold of a good thing,” the Parson remarked. “His Corrupt Excellency seems to place every faith in you. Your four-flush was admirable all the time.”
“It took a bit of working, I can tell you. He’s as slick as a rat.”
“But he doesn’t suspect anything wrong?”
“Hasn’t the slightest idea of it, my dear Tommy. He fancies I’m going to marry his daughter. The fat old mother is already imagining herself mother-in-law of a British peer.”
“Yes. All Rome knows that you’ve fallen in love with the pretty Velia, and that you’ve told her the tale. What a fellow you are with the ladies.”
“Why?” he laughed taking a cigarette. “They are all very charming and delightful. But in my career I generally manage to make them useful. It’s really remarkable what a woman will do in the interests of the man whom she fancies is in love with her. Fortunately, perhaps, for me, I’ve only been in love once.”
“And it resulted in a tragedy,” remarked the Parson quietly, knowing that he referred to the Princess.
His Lordship sighed, flinging himself down in his armchair, worn out by long travel.
“My dear boy,” he said with a weary sigh, “if I ever got married I’d soon go mothy—everybody does. Married people, whatever their position in life, settle down into the monotonous groove that is the death of all romance. Before a man marries a girl they have little dinners together at restaurants, and little suppers, and all seems so bright and gay under the red candle-shades. We see it on every hand. But why should it all be dropped for heavy meals and dulness, just because two people who like one another have the marriage service read over them?”
The Parson laughed. His friend was always amusing when he discussed the question of matrimony.
During the next four days his Lordship, in the character of Mr Tremlett—as he was known in certain circles in the City—was busy with financiers to whom he offered the concession. His story was that it had been granted by the Italian Government to his cousin, Lord Nassington, and that the latter had given it into his hands to negotiate.
In the various quarters where he offered it the concession caused a flutter of excitement. The shrewdest men in the City saw that it was a good thing, and one after the other craved a day to think it over. It really was one of the best things that had been offered for a long time. The terms required by the Italian Government were not at all heavy, and huge profits were certain to be made out of such a monopoly.
The great tracts of fertile land in central and southern Italy would, by means of motor-transport, be opened up to trade, while Tremlett’s picturesque story of how the concession had been snatched away from a strong group of German financiers was, to more than one capitalist, most fascinating.
Indeed he saw half a dozen of the most influential men in the City, and before a week was out he had got together a syndicate which could command a couple of millions sterling.
They were all of them shrewd men, however, and he saw that it behoved him to be on the alert. There is such a thing in the City as to be “frozen out” of a good thing, even when one holds it in one’s hand.
By dint of close watching and clever observation, he discovered something, and this caused him to ponder deeply. The syndicate expressed themselves ready to treat, but for the present he was rather unwilling.
Some hitches occurred on technicalities, and there were a number of meetings to consider this point and that. By all this Mr Tremlett saw that he was losing time, and at the same moment he was not keeping faith with the old statesman concerning the amount to be paid into Madame’s account in Paris. At last one morning, after the Parson had left for an unknown destination, he took a taxi-cab down to the City with a bold resolve.
The five prominent financiers were seated together in an office in Old Broad Street when Mr Tremlett, leaning back in his chair, said:
“Well, gentlemen, it seems that we are as far away as ever from coming to terms, and I think it useless to discuss the matter further. I must take the business elsewhere.”
“We admit,” exclaimed an old bald man, a director of one of London’s largest banks, “that it is a good thing, but the price you ask is prohibitive.”
“I can get it in Paris. So I shall go there,” was Tremlett’s prompt reply.
“Well,” exclaimed the bald man, “let’s get straight to facts. Your cousin, Lord Nassington, wants sixty thousand pounds in cash for the concession and a percentage of shares, and that, we have decided, is far too much.”
“Those are his figures,” remarked Tremlett.
“Well, then all we can offer is one-half—thirty thousand in cash and ten per cent, of shares in the company,” said the other, “and,” he added, “I venture to say that ours is a very handsome offer.” Tremlett rose from the table with a sarcastic smile.
“Let us talk of something else,” he said. “I haven’t come down here to the City to play at marbles.”
“Well,” asked the old man who was head of the syndicate. “What are your lowest terms?”
“I’ve stated them.”
“But you don’t give us time to inquire into the business,” he complained.
“I have shown you the actual concession. Surely you are satisfied with it!”
“We are.”
“And I’ve told you the conditions of the contract. Yet you postpone your decision from day to day!”
The five men glanced at each other, rather uneasily Tremlett thought.
“Well,” he went on. “This is the last time I shall attend any meeting. We come to a decision this morning, or the matter is off. You, gentlemen, don’t even showbona fides!”
“Well, I think you know something of the standing of all of us,” the banker said.
“That is so. But my cousin complains that he, having offered the concession, you on your part do not attempt to show your intention to take it up.”
“But we do. We wish to fix a price to-day,” remarked another of the men.
“A price, gentlemen, which is ridiculous,” declared Tremlett.
The five men consulted together in undertones, and in the end advanced their offer five thousand pounds. At this Tremlett only shook his shoulders. A further five thousand was the result, and a long discussion followed.
“Have you your cousin’s authority to accept terms?” asked one of the capitalists.
“I have.”
“Then forty thousand is all we can offer.”
Tremlett hesitated.
“I have a number of payments to make for bribery,” he declared. “It will take half that sum.”
“That does not concern us, my dear sir,” said the bald-headed banker. “We know that a concession such as this can only be obtained by the judicious application of palm-oil.”
“But I must pay out nearly twenty thousand almost immediately,” Tremlett said.
At this there was another long discussion, whereupon at last the bald-headed man said:
“If the payment of the bribes is imperative at once, we will, on consideration of the business being to-day concluded on a forty thousand pound basis, hand you over half the sum at once. That is our final decision.”
Tremlett was not at all anxious. Indeed he took up his hat and cane, and was about to leave, when two of the men present exercising all their powers of persuasion, got him at last to reseat himself and to accept the sum of twenty thousand pounds down, and twenty thousand thirty days from that date, in addition to a percentage of shares in the company to be formed.
Memoranda were drawn up and signed by all parties, whereupon Tremlett took from his pocket the official concession and handed it to the head of the syndicate.
That same afternoon, before four o’clock, he had received a draft for twenty thousand pounds, with which he had opened an account in Charles’s name at a branch bank in Tottenham Court Road.
At nine o’clock that same evening he left for Paris, putting up at a small obscure hotel near the Gare du Nord where he waited in patience for nearly a week.
Once or twice he telegraphed, and received replies.
Late one night the Parson arrived unexpectedly and entered the shabby bedroom where his Lordship was lounging in an armchair reading a French novel.
He sprung up at the entrance of the round-faced cleric, saying:
“Well, Tommy? How has it gone? Tell me quick.”
“You were quite right,” exclaimed the clergyman. “The crowd in London were going behind your back. They sent two clever men to Rome, and those fellows tried to deal with Boncini direct. They arrived the day after I did, and they offered him an extra twenty thousand if he would rescind your concession, and grant them a new one. Boncini was too avaricious and refused, so they then treated with you.”
“I got twenty thousand,” remarked his Lordship, “got it in cash safe in the bank.”
“Yes. I got your wire.”
“And what did you do?” asked his friend.
“I acted just as you ordered. As soon as I was convinced that the people in London were working behind our backs, I laid my plans. Then when your wire came that you’d netted the twenty thousand, I acted.”
“How?”
“I took all the signed proof you gave me of old Boncini’s acceptance of the bribe, and of Madame’s banking account at the Credit Lyonnais, to that scoundrel Ricci, the red-hot Socialist deputy in the Chamber.”
“And what did he say?” asked his Lordship breathlessly.
“Say!” echoed the other. “He was delighted. I spent the whole evening with him. Next day, he and his colleagues held a meeting, and that afternoon he asked in the Chamber whether his Excellency, the Minister of the Interior, had not been bribed by an English syndicate and put a number of similarly awkward questions. The Government had a difficulty in evading the truth, but imagine the sensation when he waved proofs of the corruptness of the Cabinet in the face of the House. A terrible scene of disorder ensued, and the greatest sensation has been caused. Look here,”—and he handed his friend a copy ofLe Soir.
At the head of a column on the front page were the words in French, “Cabinet Crisis in Italy,” and beneath, a telegram from Rome announcing that in consequence of the exposure of grave scandals by the Socialists, the Italian Cabinet had placed their resignations in the hands of his Majesty.
“Serve that old thief Boncini right,” declared his Lordship. “He was ready to sell me for an extra few thousands, but I fortunately got in before him. I wonder if the pretty Velia has still any aspirations to enter the British peerage?”
And both men laughed merrily at thought of the nice little nest-egg they had managed to filch so cleverly from the hands of five of the smartest financiers in the City of London.
Chapter Ten.Love and the Outlaw.“By Jove!” I ejaculated, “Who’s the girl, Prince?”“That’s Zorka. Pretty, isn’t she, Diprose?”“Pretty!” I echoed. “Why, she’s the most beautiful woman I’ve seen in the whole of Servia!”We were driving slowly together in the big “sixty” up the main street of the city of Belgrade, and were at that moment passing the iron railings of the palace of his Majesty King Peter. It was a bright dry afternoon, and the boulevard was thronged by a smart crowd, ladies in Paris-made gowns, and officers in brilliant uniforms and white crosses with red and white ribbons on their breasts.Belgrade, though constantly in a ferment of political storm and stress, and where rumours of plots against the throne are whispered nightly in the corners of drawing-rooms, is, nevertheless, a quiet and pleasant place. Its picturesque situation, high up upon its rocks at the confluence of the Save with the Danube, its pretty Kalemegdan gardens, its wide boulevard and its pleasant suburbs, combine to offer considerable attraction to the foreigner. It is the gateway to eastern Europe. At quiet old Semlin—or Zimony—on the opposite bank of the Danube is Hungary, the fringe of western Europe: in Belgrade the Orient commences.I happened to be at the Grand at Belgrade, and had there found the Prince, or Reggie Martin, as he always called himself in the Balkans. He was idling, with no apparent object. Only the faithful Garrett was with him. Both Charles and the Parson he had left behind in London. Therefore, I concluded that the reason of his presence in Servia was to learn some diplomatic secret or other, for he only went to the Balkans with that one object.Of his business, the Prince seldom, if ever, spoke. Even from his most intimate associate, the Rev. Thomas Clayton, he usually concealed his ulterior object until it was attained. The Parson, Garrett, and Charles acted in blind obedience. They were paid to obey, not to reason, he often told them.And so it was that although we had been together a week in King Peter’s capital, I was in entire ignorance of the reason of his presence there.As we had brought the big car slowly along the boulevard, a dark-eyed peasant-girl, with a face full of wondrous beauty, had nodded saucily to him, and this had caused me to notice and admire her. Belgrade is full of pretty women, but not one was half so handsome. She was about twenty, I judged, and the manner in which her hair was dressed with the gay-coloured handkerchief upon it was in the style of unmarried women.“I want to speak to her, to ask her a question,” the Prince said suddenly, after we had gone some distance. And driving the car down into the square we turned back in order to overtake her.“An old friend of yours?” I inquired.“Yes, my dear Diprose,” he laughed as he touched the button of the electric horn. “And a girl with a very remarkable past. Her story would make a good novel—by Jove it would.”Five minutes later we had overtaken her, and pulled up at the kerb. The girl blushed and appeared confused as my companion, stopping the car, got down and stood at her side with his motor-cap raised. He spoke to her in his best Servian, for he knew a smattering of that difficult language, and appeared to be inviting her to enter the car and come for a run.At first she was disinclined to accept the invitation, because of the crowd of smart promenaders. She was probably shy at being seen in the company of two foreigners. At last her curiosity as to what conveyance by automobile might be got the better of her, and she reluctantly entered the door held open for her.Then Reggie introduced us, and got back to his seat at the wheel, I mounting again to my place beside him.In a few minutes we were out on the broad Semendria road, a fine well-kept military highway, and on getting clear of the town, put on a “move” until the speedometer before me registered fifty miles an hour.Zorka, now alone with us, clapped her hands with childish delight. She was an Eastern beauty of rare type, with full red lips, magnificent luminous eyes, and a pink and white complexion that any woman of Mayfair would envy.Ten miles from Belgrade, we stopped at a small wine-shop and had some refreshment. She sat at the little table before us laughing at me because we could not understand each other. In lieu of paying the rustic beauty compliments, I raised my glass and bowed. She accepted my homage with queenly grace. Indeed, in her peasant costume of scarlet and black, with golden sequins on the bodice, she reminded me of a heroine of opera.We sat in the little garden above the broad blue Danube until the sun grew golden with departing day, the Prince chatting with her and laughing merrily. He seemed to be asking many questions, while I, in my curiosity, kept pestering him to tell the story of our beautiful companion—the story which he had declared to be so remarkable and romantic.He had offered her one of his “Petroffs” from his gold cigarette-case, and she was smoking with the air of one accustomed to the use of tobacco. Our eyes met suddenly, and blowing a cloud of smoke from her pretty lips she suddenly burst out laughing. Apparently she was enjoying that unconventional meeting to its full bent. She had never before ridden in a motor-car—indeed, there are but few in Servia—and the rush through the air had exhilarated her. I noted her well-formed hands, her splendid bust, and her slim, graceful figure, and I longed to hear her story. The Prince possessed, indeed, a wide circle of friends ranging from princes of the blood down to peasants.At last he made some remarks, whereupon our delightful little companion grew suddenly silent, her great dark eyes fixed upon me.“Zorka is not Servian, Diprose,” the Prince began. “She’s Turkish. And this meeting to-day has recalled to me memories, of a strange and very remarkable incident which occurred to me not so very long ago.” And then he went on to relate the following chapter of his amazing life-story. I will here record it in his own words:That silent night was glorious. I shall preserve its memory for ever.High up to that mountain fastness I was the first stranger to ascend, for I was the guest of a wild tribe of Albanian brigands, those men of the Skreli who from time to time hold up travellers to ransom, and against whom the Turkish Government are powerless.It was a weird, never-to-be-forgotten experience, living with those tall, handsome fellows in white skin-tight woollen trousers with big snake-like bands running up the legs, black furry boleros, and white fezes. Every man was armed to the teeth with great silver-hilted pistols and long knives in their belts, and nobody went a dozen yards without his rifle ready loaded.Ever since the days before we were together at Cheltenham, Diprose, I had read stories of brigands, but here was the real thing—the free-booters of the mountains, who would never let me go about without a dozen men as guard, lest I should be mistaken for a stranger and “picked off” by one of the tribe lurking behind a rock. Life is, indeed, cheap in the Skreli country, that great range of inaccessible mountains east of gallant little Montenegro.On that night in the early autumn I was seated upon a rock with a tall, thin, wiry, but handsome, young man, named Lûk, known in his tribe as “The Open Eye,” whom the great chieftain, Vatt Marashi, had given me as head of my body-guard, while beside was the dark-faced Albanian who, speaking Italian, acted as my guide and interpreter. Zorka was spinning her flax close by.In the domain of his Imperial Majesty the Sultan, the moon seems to shine with far greater brilliancy than it does anywhere else in the world, and surely the panorama of high mountain and deep dark valley there spread before us was a veritable stage-picture, while the men at my side were as romantic looking a pair as could be found anywhere in real life.Many times, as at night I lay down upon my humble bed of leaves, had I reflected how insecure was my position, and how easily my hosts could break their word, hold me to ransom, and worry the Foreign Office. Yet, let me here assert that all, from the chieftain, down to the humblest tribesman, treated me with a kindness, courtesy, and forethought, that, from the first, caused me to admire them. They might be brigands, and the blood-curdling stories of their cruelty might possibly be true, but they were, without doubt, a most gentlemanly gang of ruffians.We had eaten our evening meal, and were sitting in the calm night smoking cigarettes, prior to turning in. The two men beside me had placed their rifles upon the ground, where the moonbeams glinted along the bright barrels, and our conversation had become exhausted.Below, in that dark valley, ran the mule-track to Ipek, therefore day and night it was watched for passing travellers, as indeed were all the paths at the confines of the territory over which my friend Vatt Marashi, defiant of the Turks, ruled so firmly and yet so justly.Lûk, rolling a fresh cigarette, was making some remark to Palok, my guide, in his peculiar soft-sounding but unwritten language, when it suddenly occurred to me to ask him to give me some little reminiscence of his own adventurous life.He was silent for a few moments, his keen gaze upon the shining rifle-barrel before him, then, with Palok translating into Italian, he told me the story of how he earned his nickname of “The Open Eye.”About two years before, when his tribe were at feud with their neighbours, the powerful Kastrati, who live in the opposite range of mountains, he was one dark night with a party of his fellow tribesmen in ambush, expecting a raid from their enemies. The false alarms were several when, of a sudden, Lûk discerned a dark figure moving slowly in the gloom. Raising his rifle he was on the point of firing when some impulse seized him to stay his hand and shout a challenge.The reply was a frightened one—and in Turkish.Lûk came forth from his hiding-place, and a few seconds later, to his great surprise, encountered the stranger, who proved to be a woman wearing her veil, and enshrouded by an ugly black shawl wrapped about her. He knew sufficient Turkish to demand her name, and whence she had come, but she refused to satisfy him. She had already recognised by his dress, that he was of the tribe of the Skreli, therefore she knew that she had fallen into the hands of enemies.“Speak!” he cried, believing her to be a spy from the Kastrati. “Tell me who sent you here to us? Whither are you going?”“I know not,” was her reply in a sweet voice which told him at once that she was quite young, and he, being unmarried, became instantly interested.“Where are you from?” he asked, expecting that she had come from Skodra, the nearest Turkish town.“From Constantinople,” was her reply.“Constantinople!” gasped Lûk, to whom the capital was so far off as to be only a mere city of legend. It was, indeed, many hundred leagues away. In the darkness he could not see her eyes. He could only distinguish that the lower part of her face was veiled like that of all Mahommedan women.“And you have come here alone?” he asked.“Yes, alone. I—I could not remain in Constantinople longer. Am I still in Turkey?”“Nominally, yes. But the Sultan does not rule us here. We, of the Skreli, are Christians, and our country is a free one—to ourselves, but not to our captives.”“Ah!” she said with failing heart. “I see! I am your captive—eh? I have heard in Constantinople how you treat the Turks whom you capture.”“You may have heard many stories, but I assure you that the Skreli never maltreat a woman,” was the brigand’s proud answer. “This path is unsafe for you, and besides it is my duty to take you to our chief Vatt Marashi that he may decide whether we give you safe conduct.”“No, no!” she implored. “I have heard of him. Take pity upon me—a defenceless woman! I—I thought to escape from Turkey. I have no passport, so I left the train and hoped to get across the mountains into Montenegro, where I should be free.”“Then you have escaped from your harem—eh?” asked Lûk, his curiosity now thoroughly aroused.“Yes. But I have money here with me—and my jewels. I will pay you—pay you well, if you will help me. Ah! you do not know!”Lûk was silent for a moment.“When a woman is in distress the Skreli give their assistance without payment,” was his reply, and then, as day was breaking, he led her up the steep and secret paths to that little settlement where we now were—the headquarters of the all-powerful Vatt Marashi.At the latter’s orders she unwound the veil from her face, disclosing the beautiful countenance of a Turkish girl of eighteen, and when she took off her cloak it was seen that beneath she wore a beautiful harem dress, big, baggy trousers of rich mauve and gold brocade, and a little bolero of amaranth velvet richly embroidered with gold. Upon her neck were splendid emeralds, pearls, and turquoises, and upon her wrists fine bracelets encrusted with diamonds.She stood in the lowly hut before the chief and her captor Lûk, a vision of perfect beauty—looking “a veritable houri as promised by Mahommed,” as Lûk put it.Vatt Marashi listened to her story. She had, she told him, escaped from her father’s harem because she was betrothed, as is usual in Turkey, to a man whom she had never seen. She had taken money from the place where one of the black eunuchs hoarded it, and with the assistance of a young officer, a cousin of hers, had succeeded in leaving the capital in the baggage-waggon of the Orient Express. Unable to procure a passport, however, she dare not attempt to cross the frontier into Bulgaria, for she would at once be detected, refused permission to travel, and sent back. For a Turkish woman to attempt to leave Turkey in that manner the punishment is death. So at some small station near the frontier, the name of which she did not know, she had, under cover of night, left the train, and taken to the mountains. For four days she had wandered alone, until Lûk had discovered her.“And what was done with her?” I inquired, much interested.“Well,” replied my companion. “She elected to remain with us, our chief giving her assurance that she would be well and honourably treated. He pointed out that had she been a man he would have demanded of the Sultan a heavy ransom for her release, but as she was a defenceless woman, and alone, she was not to remain a prisoner. If she cared to accept the offer of the protection of the Skreli, then every man of his tribe would defend her, and her honour to the last drop of blood remaining in their veins. The word of Skreli, once given, is, as you know, never broken.”And his was no idle boast. The code of honour among the tribes of Northern Albania would put even ours of England to the blush. The Skreli are very bad enemies, but they are, as I know from personal experience, most firm and devoted friends.“And so it came about,” Lûk went on, “that Zorka—that was her name—was placed in my mother’s charge, and discarded her veil, as do our own women. Well—I suppose I may confess it—I loved her. It was only to be expected, I suppose, for she was very lovely, and every unmarried man in the tribe was her devoted admirer. Though she lived with us, no word of affection passed between us. Why should it? Would it not have been folly?—she the daughter of a great Pasha who was seeking for her all over Turkey, and I a poor humble tribesman, and a Christian into the bargain? And so a year went over. We often walked together, and the others envied me my friendship with the delicate and beautiful girl who preferred our free untrammelled life of the mountains to the constant confinement of her father’s harem on the Bosphorus. Unlike that of our women, her skin was lily white, and her little hands as soft as satin. Ah! yes, I loved her with all my soul, though I never dared to tell her so. She became as a sister to me, as a daughter to my mother. It was she who said the last word to me when I went forth upon a raid; she who waited to welcome me on my return.”“And you said nothing,” I remarked, with some surprise.“Nothing. Our chief had ordered that no man should declare his love to her. She was our guest, like yourself, and she was therefore sacred. Well,” he went on, gazing thoughtfully across the dark valley, the white moonbeams shining full upon his thin, sun-tanned countenance. “One day our men down yonder, on the northern border, discovered three strangers who were examining the rocks and chipping pieces off—French mining engineers we afterwards found them to be. They were captured, brought up here, and held to ransom. Two were elderly men, but the third was about twenty-eight, well-dressed with a quantity of French banknotes upon him. At first the price we asked of the Sultan was too high. The Vali of Skodra refused to pay, but suggested a smaller sum. We were in no hurry to compromise, so the three remained prisoners, and—”“And what?”“Well, during that time the younger of the three saw Zorka, and fell in love with her. I caught the pair one night walking together. They sat here, at this very spot. The Frenchman had been in Constantinople, and, speaking a little Turkish, could converse with her. I crept up and overheard some of their conversation. Next day I told the chief, and when he heard it he was angry, and ordered that the prisoners were to be released and sent away—without ransom—that very day. Zorka was one of ourselves. So that afternoon the three strangers were escorted down to the Skodra road, and there told to begone.”Here Lûk broke off, slowly rolling a fresh cigarette in silence. By the light of the brilliant moon I saw the sudden change in his countenance.“Well?” I asked.“There is not much more to tell,” he said hoarsely, hard lines showing at the corners of his mouth. “A few weeks later we one night missed Zorka. The whole tribe went forth to search for her. Some men of the Hoti, down on the way to Skodra, had seen a woman pass. Vatt Marashi took me with some others down to the lake-side, where we heard that she had escaped on the little steamer that runs up the lake to Ryeka, in Montenegro. And further that she had a male companion who, from his description, we knew to be the Frenchman whose life we had spared. With the man was an elderly woman. He had evidently returned to Skodra, and sent Zorka a message in secret. At risk of arrest by the Turks we went down into Skodra itself, and saw the captain of the steamer, from whom we learnt that the Frenchman’s name was Paul Darbour, and that he was a mining engineer, living in Paris. While on the boat he had chatted to the captain in French, and mentioned that he was going first to Ragusa, down on the Dalmatian coast. The Skreli punish an insult to their women with death, therefore that same night, upon the lake shore, we twelve men and our good chief raised the blood-feud, and I was ordered to go forth in search of the man who had enticed away our Zorka. None of them, however knew how deeply I loved her myself. Well, I left, wearing the Montenegrin dress, the blue baggy trousers, scarlet jacket, and pork-pie hat. Through Montenegro, down to Cattaro, I followed them, and took the steamer along the Adriatic to Ragusa. But they had already left. For a month I followed the trio from place to place, until late one night, in Trieste, I met Zorka in European dress, walking with her lover along the quays. He was speaking sharply to her, evidently trying to induce her to act against her will, for she was weeping bitterly. I crept after them unseen in the shadows. From words she let drop in Turkish I knew that he was treating her with cruelty, now that he had got her in his power—that she bitterly regretted listening to his love-speeches. I clenched my teeth, took a few sharp steps, and next instant my keen knife was buried up to the hilt behind our enemy’s shoulder. He fell forward almost without a cry.”“And Zorka?” I asked.“I brought her safely back again to us,” was his simple answer. “See. She is my wife!”Lûk is here, outside Belgrade, the Prince added. But in secret, for a price is set upon his head. He is a Turkish brigand, and he and his band terrorise the Montenegrin border. The Servian Government offered, only a month ago, twenty thousand dinars for his capture. They little dream he is in hiding in a cave over in yonder mountain, and that he is supplied with food by his faithful little wife here!And true sportsman that he was, he raised his glass again to her—and to her husband.
“By Jove!” I ejaculated, “Who’s the girl, Prince?”
“That’s Zorka. Pretty, isn’t she, Diprose?”
“Pretty!” I echoed. “Why, she’s the most beautiful woman I’ve seen in the whole of Servia!”
We were driving slowly together in the big “sixty” up the main street of the city of Belgrade, and were at that moment passing the iron railings of the palace of his Majesty King Peter. It was a bright dry afternoon, and the boulevard was thronged by a smart crowd, ladies in Paris-made gowns, and officers in brilliant uniforms and white crosses with red and white ribbons on their breasts.
Belgrade, though constantly in a ferment of political storm and stress, and where rumours of plots against the throne are whispered nightly in the corners of drawing-rooms, is, nevertheless, a quiet and pleasant place. Its picturesque situation, high up upon its rocks at the confluence of the Save with the Danube, its pretty Kalemegdan gardens, its wide boulevard and its pleasant suburbs, combine to offer considerable attraction to the foreigner. It is the gateway to eastern Europe. At quiet old Semlin—or Zimony—on the opposite bank of the Danube is Hungary, the fringe of western Europe: in Belgrade the Orient commences.
I happened to be at the Grand at Belgrade, and had there found the Prince, or Reggie Martin, as he always called himself in the Balkans. He was idling, with no apparent object. Only the faithful Garrett was with him. Both Charles and the Parson he had left behind in London. Therefore, I concluded that the reason of his presence in Servia was to learn some diplomatic secret or other, for he only went to the Balkans with that one object.
Of his business, the Prince seldom, if ever, spoke. Even from his most intimate associate, the Rev. Thomas Clayton, he usually concealed his ulterior object until it was attained. The Parson, Garrett, and Charles acted in blind obedience. They were paid to obey, not to reason, he often told them.
And so it was that although we had been together a week in King Peter’s capital, I was in entire ignorance of the reason of his presence there.
As we had brought the big car slowly along the boulevard, a dark-eyed peasant-girl, with a face full of wondrous beauty, had nodded saucily to him, and this had caused me to notice and admire her. Belgrade is full of pretty women, but not one was half so handsome. She was about twenty, I judged, and the manner in which her hair was dressed with the gay-coloured handkerchief upon it was in the style of unmarried women.
“I want to speak to her, to ask her a question,” the Prince said suddenly, after we had gone some distance. And driving the car down into the square we turned back in order to overtake her.
“An old friend of yours?” I inquired.
“Yes, my dear Diprose,” he laughed as he touched the button of the electric horn. “And a girl with a very remarkable past. Her story would make a good novel—by Jove it would.”
Five minutes later we had overtaken her, and pulled up at the kerb. The girl blushed and appeared confused as my companion, stopping the car, got down and stood at her side with his motor-cap raised. He spoke to her in his best Servian, for he knew a smattering of that difficult language, and appeared to be inviting her to enter the car and come for a run.
At first she was disinclined to accept the invitation, because of the crowd of smart promenaders. She was probably shy at being seen in the company of two foreigners. At last her curiosity as to what conveyance by automobile might be got the better of her, and she reluctantly entered the door held open for her.
Then Reggie introduced us, and got back to his seat at the wheel, I mounting again to my place beside him.
In a few minutes we were out on the broad Semendria road, a fine well-kept military highway, and on getting clear of the town, put on a “move” until the speedometer before me registered fifty miles an hour.
Zorka, now alone with us, clapped her hands with childish delight. She was an Eastern beauty of rare type, with full red lips, magnificent luminous eyes, and a pink and white complexion that any woman of Mayfair would envy.
Ten miles from Belgrade, we stopped at a small wine-shop and had some refreshment. She sat at the little table before us laughing at me because we could not understand each other. In lieu of paying the rustic beauty compliments, I raised my glass and bowed. She accepted my homage with queenly grace. Indeed, in her peasant costume of scarlet and black, with golden sequins on the bodice, she reminded me of a heroine of opera.
We sat in the little garden above the broad blue Danube until the sun grew golden with departing day, the Prince chatting with her and laughing merrily. He seemed to be asking many questions, while I, in my curiosity, kept pestering him to tell the story of our beautiful companion—the story which he had declared to be so remarkable and romantic.
He had offered her one of his “Petroffs” from his gold cigarette-case, and she was smoking with the air of one accustomed to the use of tobacco. Our eyes met suddenly, and blowing a cloud of smoke from her pretty lips she suddenly burst out laughing. Apparently she was enjoying that unconventional meeting to its full bent. She had never before ridden in a motor-car—indeed, there are but few in Servia—and the rush through the air had exhilarated her. I noted her well-formed hands, her splendid bust, and her slim, graceful figure, and I longed to hear her story. The Prince possessed, indeed, a wide circle of friends ranging from princes of the blood down to peasants.
At last he made some remarks, whereupon our delightful little companion grew suddenly silent, her great dark eyes fixed upon me.
“Zorka is not Servian, Diprose,” the Prince began. “She’s Turkish. And this meeting to-day has recalled to me memories, of a strange and very remarkable incident which occurred to me not so very long ago.” And then he went on to relate the following chapter of his amazing life-story. I will here record it in his own words:
That silent night was glorious. I shall preserve its memory for ever.
High up to that mountain fastness I was the first stranger to ascend, for I was the guest of a wild tribe of Albanian brigands, those men of the Skreli who from time to time hold up travellers to ransom, and against whom the Turkish Government are powerless.
It was a weird, never-to-be-forgotten experience, living with those tall, handsome fellows in white skin-tight woollen trousers with big snake-like bands running up the legs, black furry boleros, and white fezes. Every man was armed to the teeth with great silver-hilted pistols and long knives in their belts, and nobody went a dozen yards without his rifle ready loaded.
Ever since the days before we were together at Cheltenham, Diprose, I had read stories of brigands, but here was the real thing—the free-booters of the mountains, who would never let me go about without a dozen men as guard, lest I should be mistaken for a stranger and “picked off” by one of the tribe lurking behind a rock. Life is, indeed, cheap in the Skreli country, that great range of inaccessible mountains east of gallant little Montenegro.
On that night in the early autumn I was seated upon a rock with a tall, thin, wiry, but handsome, young man, named Lûk, known in his tribe as “The Open Eye,” whom the great chieftain, Vatt Marashi, had given me as head of my body-guard, while beside was the dark-faced Albanian who, speaking Italian, acted as my guide and interpreter. Zorka was spinning her flax close by.
In the domain of his Imperial Majesty the Sultan, the moon seems to shine with far greater brilliancy than it does anywhere else in the world, and surely the panorama of high mountain and deep dark valley there spread before us was a veritable stage-picture, while the men at my side were as romantic looking a pair as could be found anywhere in real life.
Many times, as at night I lay down upon my humble bed of leaves, had I reflected how insecure was my position, and how easily my hosts could break their word, hold me to ransom, and worry the Foreign Office. Yet, let me here assert that all, from the chieftain, down to the humblest tribesman, treated me with a kindness, courtesy, and forethought, that, from the first, caused me to admire them. They might be brigands, and the blood-curdling stories of their cruelty might possibly be true, but they were, without doubt, a most gentlemanly gang of ruffians.
We had eaten our evening meal, and were sitting in the calm night smoking cigarettes, prior to turning in. The two men beside me had placed their rifles upon the ground, where the moonbeams glinted along the bright barrels, and our conversation had become exhausted.
Below, in that dark valley, ran the mule-track to Ipek, therefore day and night it was watched for passing travellers, as indeed were all the paths at the confines of the territory over which my friend Vatt Marashi, defiant of the Turks, ruled so firmly and yet so justly.
Lûk, rolling a fresh cigarette, was making some remark to Palok, my guide, in his peculiar soft-sounding but unwritten language, when it suddenly occurred to me to ask him to give me some little reminiscence of his own adventurous life.
He was silent for a few moments, his keen gaze upon the shining rifle-barrel before him, then, with Palok translating into Italian, he told me the story of how he earned his nickname of “The Open Eye.”
About two years before, when his tribe were at feud with their neighbours, the powerful Kastrati, who live in the opposite range of mountains, he was one dark night with a party of his fellow tribesmen in ambush, expecting a raid from their enemies. The false alarms were several when, of a sudden, Lûk discerned a dark figure moving slowly in the gloom. Raising his rifle he was on the point of firing when some impulse seized him to stay his hand and shout a challenge.
The reply was a frightened one—and in Turkish.
Lûk came forth from his hiding-place, and a few seconds later, to his great surprise, encountered the stranger, who proved to be a woman wearing her veil, and enshrouded by an ugly black shawl wrapped about her. He knew sufficient Turkish to demand her name, and whence she had come, but she refused to satisfy him. She had already recognised by his dress, that he was of the tribe of the Skreli, therefore she knew that she had fallen into the hands of enemies.
“Speak!” he cried, believing her to be a spy from the Kastrati. “Tell me who sent you here to us? Whither are you going?”
“I know not,” was her reply in a sweet voice which told him at once that she was quite young, and he, being unmarried, became instantly interested.
“Where are you from?” he asked, expecting that she had come from Skodra, the nearest Turkish town.
“From Constantinople,” was her reply.
“Constantinople!” gasped Lûk, to whom the capital was so far off as to be only a mere city of legend. It was, indeed, many hundred leagues away. In the darkness he could not see her eyes. He could only distinguish that the lower part of her face was veiled like that of all Mahommedan women.
“And you have come here alone?” he asked.
“Yes, alone. I—I could not remain in Constantinople longer. Am I still in Turkey?”
“Nominally, yes. But the Sultan does not rule us here. We, of the Skreli, are Christians, and our country is a free one—to ourselves, but not to our captives.”
“Ah!” she said with failing heart. “I see! I am your captive—eh? I have heard in Constantinople how you treat the Turks whom you capture.”
“You may have heard many stories, but I assure you that the Skreli never maltreat a woman,” was the brigand’s proud answer. “This path is unsafe for you, and besides it is my duty to take you to our chief Vatt Marashi that he may decide whether we give you safe conduct.”
“No, no!” she implored. “I have heard of him. Take pity upon me—a defenceless woman! I—I thought to escape from Turkey. I have no passport, so I left the train and hoped to get across the mountains into Montenegro, where I should be free.”
“Then you have escaped from your harem—eh?” asked Lûk, his curiosity now thoroughly aroused.
“Yes. But I have money here with me—and my jewels. I will pay you—pay you well, if you will help me. Ah! you do not know!”
Lûk was silent for a moment.
“When a woman is in distress the Skreli give their assistance without payment,” was his reply, and then, as day was breaking, he led her up the steep and secret paths to that little settlement where we now were—the headquarters of the all-powerful Vatt Marashi.
At the latter’s orders she unwound the veil from her face, disclosing the beautiful countenance of a Turkish girl of eighteen, and when she took off her cloak it was seen that beneath she wore a beautiful harem dress, big, baggy trousers of rich mauve and gold brocade, and a little bolero of amaranth velvet richly embroidered with gold. Upon her neck were splendid emeralds, pearls, and turquoises, and upon her wrists fine bracelets encrusted with diamonds.
She stood in the lowly hut before the chief and her captor Lûk, a vision of perfect beauty—looking “a veritable houri as promised by Mahommed,” as Lûk put it.
Vatt Marashi listened to her story. She had, she told him, escaped from her father’s harem because she was betrothed, as is usual in Turkey, to a man whom she had never seen. She had taken money from the place where one of the black eunuchs hoarded it, and with the assistance of a young officer, a cousin of hers, had succeeded in leaving the capital in the baggage-waggon of the Orient Express. Unable to procure a passport, however, she dare not attempt to cross the frontier into Bulgaria, for she would at once be detected, refused permission to travel, and sent back. For a Turkish woman to attempt to leave Turkey in that manner the punishment is death. So at some small station near the frontier, the name of which she did not know, she had, under cover of night, left the train, and taken to the mountains. For four days she had wandered alone, until Lûk had discovered her.
“And what was done with her?” I inquired, much interested.
“Well,” replied my companion. “She elected to remain with us, our chief giving her assurance that she would be well and honourably treated. He pointed out that had she been a man he would have demanded of the Sultan a heavy ransom for her release, but as she was a defenceless woman, and alone, she was not to remain a prisoner. If she cared to accept the offer of the protection of the Skreli, then every man of his tribe would defend her, and her honour to the last drop of blood remaining in their veins. The word of Skreli, once given, is, as you know, never broken.”
And his was no idle boast. The code of honour among the tribes of Northern Albania would put even ours of England to the blush. The Skreli are very bad enemies, but they are, as I know from personal experience, most firm and devoted friends.
“And so it came about,” Lûk went on, “that Zorka—that was her name—was placed in my mother’s charge, and discarded her veil, as do our own women. Well—I suppose I may confess it—I loved her. It was only to be expected, I suppose, for she was very lovely, and every unmarried man in the tribe was her devoted admirer. Though she lived with us, no word of affection passed between us. Why should it? Would it not have been folly?—she the daughter of a great Pasha who was seeking for her all over Turkey, and I a poor humble tribesman, and a Christian into the bargain? And so a year went over. We often walked together, and the others envied me my friendship with the delicate and beautiful girl who preferred our free untrammelled life of the mountains to the constant confinement of her father’s harem on the Bosphorus. Unlike that of our women, her skin was lily white, and her little hands as soft as satin. Ah! yes, I loved her with all my soul, though I never dared to tell her so. She became as a sister to me, as a daughter to my mother. It was she who said the last word to me when I went forth upon a raid; she who waited to welcome me on my return.”
“And you said nothing,” I remarked, with some surprise.
“Nothing. Our chief had ordered that no man should declare his love to her. She was our guest, like yourself, and she was therefore sacred. Well,” he went on, gazing thoughtfully across the dark valley, the white moonbeams shining full upon his thin, sun-tanned countenance. “One day our men down yonder, on the northern border, discovered three strangers who were examining the rocks and chipping pieces off—French mining engineers we afterwards found them to be. They were captured, brought up here, and held to ransom. Two were elderly men, but the third was about twenty-eight, well-dressed with a quantity of French banknotes upon him. At first the price we asked of the Sultan was too high. The Vali of Skodra refused to pay, but suggested a smaller sum. We were in no hurry to compromise, so the three remained prisoners, and—”
“And what?”
“Well, during that time the younger of the three saw Zorka, and fell in love with her. I caught the pair one night walking together. They sat here, at this very spot. The Frenchman had been in Constantinople, and, speaking a little Turkish, could converse with her. I crept up and overheard some of their conversation. Next day I told the chief, and when he heard it he was angry, and ordered that the prisoners were to be released and sent away—without ransom—that very day. Zorka was one of ourselves. So that afternoon the three strangers were escorted down to the Skodra road, and there told to begone.”
Here Lûk broke off, slowly rolling a fresh cigarette in silence. By the light of the brilliant moon I saw the sudden change in his countenance.
“Well?” I asked.
“There is not much more to tell,” he said hoarsely, hard lines showing at the corners of his mouth. “A few weeks later we one night missed Zorka. The whole tribe went forth to search for her. Some men of the Hoti, down on the way to Skodra, had seen a woman pass. Vatt Marashi took me with some others down to the lake-side, where we heard that she had escaped on the little steamer that runs up the lake to Ryeka, in Montenegro. And further that she had a male companion who, from his description, we knew to be the Frenchman whose life we had spared. With the man was an elderly woman. He had evidently returned to Skodra, and sent Zorka a message in secret. At risk of arrest by the Turks we went down into Skodra itself, and saw the captain of the steamer, from whom we learnt that the Frenchman’s name was Paul Darbour, and that he was a mining engineer, living in Paris. While on the boat he had chatted to the captain in French, and mentioned that he was going first to Ragusa, down on the Dalmatian coast. The Skreli punish an insult to their women with death, therefore that same night, upon the lake shore, we twelve men and our good chief raised the blood-feud, and I was ordered to go forth in search of the man who had enticed away our Zorka. None of them, however knew how deeply I loved her myself. Well, I left, wearing the Montenegrin dress, the blue baggy trousers, scarlet jacket, and pork-pie hat. Through Montenegro, down to Cattaro, I followed them, and took the steamer along the Adriatic to Ragusa. But they had already left. For a month I followed the trio from place to place, until late one night, in Trieste, I met Zorka in European dress, walking with her lover along the quays. He was speaking sharply to her, evidently trying to induce her to act against her will, for she was weeping bitterly. I crept after them unseen in the shadows. From words she let drop in Turkish I knew that he was treating her with cruelty, now that he had got her in his power—that she bitterly regretted listening to his love-speeches. I clenched my teeth, took a few sharp steps, and next instant my keen knife was buried up to the hilt behind our enemy’s shoulder. He fell forward almost without a cry.”
“And Zorka?” I asked.
“I brought her safely back again to us,” was his simple answer. “See. She is my wife!”
Lûk is here, outside Belgrade, the Prince added. But in secret, for a price is set upon his head. He is a Turkish brigand, and he and his band terrorise the Montenegrin border. The Servian Government offered, only a month ago, twenty thousand dinars for his capture. They little dream he is in hiding in a cave over in yonder mountain, and that he is supplied with food by his faithful little wife here!
And true sportsman that he was, he raised his glass again to her—and to her husband.