Introductory material (continued 2)

“Who is the little lady who sat next to me at dinner? Look! She’s over there with the French military attaché.”

“Oh, the Contessina! We met her a few weeks ago at the Spaniard’s”—meaning the Spanish Embassy. “She was with a Baroness Boin, her chaperon. She seems to be well known and popular, for she goes everywhere in Rome. Her name is Angela Ugostini, daughter of Count Ugostini of Ravenna.”

“She is very charming. Don’t you think so, Excellenza?” I said, as my eyes wandered around the great ballroom after her.

“What!” cried the Ambassador’s wife in feigned protest. “Don’t you remember once in London you told me that you thought no man who carried dispatches should ever marry? And yet you are admiring a pretty girl. Well, my dear Lionel, I’m really surprised! I admit that you held that opinion before you knew Joan.”

Joan! The name stirred highly strung chords within my memory. Joan! My beloved! Though torn by emotion, I strove frantically to remain unconcerned.

“Two years ago I first met her—at your house, Lady Kingscliffe,” I remarked. “My declaration was made before that.”

“My dear Lionel, your idea of time is most erratic! Why, what are you thinking of? Are you dreaming? We’ve been here in Rome nearly two years. It must have been over four years ago.”

I remained silent. If what Her Excellency said was correct, then I had lost all knowledge of about two years of my life—of where I had been, of what acts I had committed, or of what friendships or enmities I had made. I had a blank in my life of two whole years to fill.

“You know nowadays, my dear boy, you are always a little vague on some points. Joan has told me so. I wonder why it is? Perhaps so much traveling is affecting you,” she remarked.

“What has Joan said?” I asked, wondering what had happened to me during those lost two years.

“Oh, she’s such a sweet girl, Lionel, I really wonder that you treat her as you do,” said Lady Kingscliffe reproachfully. “But there, I suppose it is no affair of mine, so let’s talk of something else.”

“Will you dance?” I asked.

“I’d rather not,” she declared gracefully. “I’m a trifle tired. To-morrow night there is the State ball at the Quirinale. You were at the last one two months ago. I see the Minister of the Household, the Marquis Visconti, over there! I’ll ask him to send you a command to the Excelsior.”

I thanked her profusely. She was quite unaware that she had unconsciously given me information of which I had been sorely in need—namely, the name of the hotel in which I was staying.

“You recollect that dainty little Marchesa Pozzoli—you had supper with her at the last State ball—she’s just died very mysteriously in Palermo—poor little woman! All Rome is talking of it. Foul play is hinted at. Her husband soon afterwards went off to Paris with La Fafala the dancer,” she added significantly.

“How very tragic!” I replied. Then, as the name slowly brought forth memories, I remembered her, for I had known Italy and Switzerland fairly well. A black-eyed, dark-haired, merry little woman of twenty-five, she had been a most graceful dancer and a cheery companion. Before her marriage she had been one of the Strozzis of Florence; since her union with Pozzoli she had been a particularly bright personage in Rome society, and her receptions at the Palace Pozzoli, in the Via Babuno, had been among the most brilliant in the winter season.

“Do they think Enrico murdered her?” I whispered.

“H’sh!” she whispered in turn, warningly. “One must not dare suggest such a thing, but I happen to know that Ghelardi, chief of the Pubblica Sicurézza, is making searching inquiries. The Duce told Richard so two days ago. Of course, that is strictly entre nous,” she added, bending and speaking in a low tone.

Mussolini strode past, and suddenly halted, laughing, to speak with the Ambassadress; hence I left her side, and a moment later found the Little Countess, who had just been conducted back to her seat by a young attaché who had been her partner.

“Won’t you dance, Contessina?” I asked her in French. With that sweet smile I seemed to recognize in the misty vista of the past, she replied gaily in the affirmative.

Conversation was rendered difficult for me because each moment in my bewilderment I feared making some faux pas. Now that I was at her side, the sweeter and more charming she appeared. To Lady Kingscliffe I suppose I had unconsciously betrayed an infatuation; for, I recollected her reproachful words concerning Joan.

Joan! She was only a shadow in the mist, a half-effaced memory of long-forgotten days. That night, amid the brilliant scene of jewel-bedecked women and uniformed men, I had awakened to a new existence and had begun life afresh.

I was infatuated with the Contessina Angela. I confess to it. Her beauty, her grace, her charm, her soft speech, overwhelmed me.

While we were dancing I complimented her on her steps, which were indeed new to me, though I found I could dance them. But, among several things which struck me as curious concerning her was that, though she spoke Italian, it was with a decided foreign accent. Neither was the softness of her features that of an Italian; yet perhaps that might be accounted for if her mother had been a foreigner. Besides, there are, I argued, many people, brought up abroad in childhood and youth, who cannot speak their own language properly.

As I held her while we danced, she greatly intrigued me, especially after what Lady Kingscliffe had told me. She and her companion, the Baroness Boin, it seemed, had suddenly appeared in Roman society and, so charming was the little Contessina, and so cleverly had she “climbed,” that the exclusive society in the Eternal City had quickly accepted her.

“I suppose you are going to the Quirinale to-morrow night?” she asked me just before the fox-trot ended.

I replied in the affirmative and expressed a profound hope that we should meet there.

“I sincerely trust that we shall,” she replied in a voice which struck me as extremely curious. “Perhaps before. Who knows?” And she laughed.

“Really, Contessina, I don’t quite understand you!” I said, much puzzled, as I bowed her to her seat.

“Nowadays you don’t understand many things it appears, Signor Hipwell,” was her reply as she smiled, turning to greet a newcomer who came to invite her for the next dance.

Ten minutes later I got my hat and coat. A flunkey had called a taxi, and I drove to the great hôtel-de-luxe the Excelsior, in which, by mere chance, I had ascertained I had my temporary abode.

After I had ascended the broad, blue-carpeted marble stairs, not knowing the number of my room I went to the concierge and asked for my key.

I was given it, and on it was the number of a second-floor apartment, large luxurious quarters with all the appointments of a modern hotel of the first class.

I saw the dark-grey clothes I had unconsciously worn that day, neatly folded, upon a chair. Upon a stand was a battered suit-case completely covered with labels of Continental hotels, a small hand-bag was upon a chair, and upon the writing-table was a letter addressed to me. Apparently it had been delivered that evening. The stamp was a Swiss one.

I tore it open. Written in an educated hand, there was a brief letter dated from an address in Lausanne, Switzerland, as follows:

“My Adored Lionel,—I have waited hourly for two whole weeks for a reply to the urgent message I sent you to London. I can bear the awful suspense no longer. I am in grave peril, with enemies surrounding me, and am alone and defenseless. Be extremely careful of your dear self on your journeys. They will not hesitate to kill you, as I have already proved to you. I am leaving for London to-morrow, if I consider it safe, and will call on you. Meanwhile, wire me your decision to my club in London and also here. I shall then know how to act. All my fondest love, dear heart, from your devoted wife,

“Illona.”

My wife Illona!! Who was she?

In the two years of my unconsciousness I had evidently married!

CHAPTER SEVEN. THE AWAKENING

What could it all mean?

I had suddenly awakened to a new world, one familiar enough to me before my sudden unconsciousness, but in which two whole years had been blotted out. Of my life or actions during that lost period I had absolutely no recollection. My mind was a perfect blank.

As I stood there I tried to recall; but my last remembrance was that horror when the girl Hatten had taken me, fettered and powerless, into that shabby little room in order to render me blind.

Happily I could still see. I gazed around the luxurious bedroom, with its rose-pink carpet, curtains, and handsome toilet fittings. I walked to the long mirror. But when I saw my reflection, I experienced a shock. I was certainly myself, but looked fully ten years older than on that night of my sinister adventure in Bloomsbury when the criminal known as Monkey Dick—so called because of his agility in climbing to upper windows—had attacked me and been accidentally shot in our struggle. I walked to the window and stood upon the balcony. The pale, pearly dawn was rising over Rome. The great piazza, with its palms, its ilexes, and flowers, was deserted, and no sound broke the quiet, save the plashing of the fountain.

Yes, the Eternal City was just the same as I had known it in my youth, when, with the dear old governor, I had spent nearly a year at the Russie, afterwards paying several visits to the capital again. I took a deep breath of the flower-scented air, refreshing after the crowded ballroom I had left; and then, returning into my room, I made a tour of it, and with curiosity examined my possessions. They were not many, scarcely anything I recognized.

On the little finger of my left hand was a fine signet-ring of lapis-lazuli. Upon it was the crest of the Hipwells—a dragon’s head. I removed it for examination, and inside found an inscription in facsimile of the same handwriting as the letter, which read: “From Illona. 3.8.24.”

The third of August, 1924! What could it commemorate? My marriage to my unknown wife? Was that possible?—for the date was within my lost years.

I replaced it upon my finger in utter bewilderment. Then I turned to the contents of my suit-case, which I emptied upon the bed.

Amid the miscellaneous collection which always accumulates in the kit of every man who is a constant traveler, almost the first thing that met my eye was a small leather case. On opening it, I found to my amazement that it was a drug-taker’s outfit! Surely I was not in the habit of taking morphine! I closed the little case and tossed it into the waste-paper basket, hoping that in my newly awakened state I should never handle it again. A case containing tie-pins and cuff-links—several sets with diamonds—was the next I opened. Among the pins was one of two square-cut diamonds with an emerald between, which I knew Joan had given me for my birthday, and a pair of red-enameled links with diamond centres were the ones I had long possessed. But my clothes were all unfamiliar, though they were smart enough, and, from the tabs, had been made by my usual tailor in Conduit Street.

In the pocket in the lid of the suit-case were some letters. These I took out, and, sitting at the writing table, I proceeded to examine them. There were hotel bills from Madrid, Brussels, and Athens, cities which I supposed I had visited in the course of my journeying as a King’s Foreign Service Messenger. That was, no doubt, my position; for, I had already found my laisser-passer which claimed international courtesy, so that my luggage was exempt from Customs examination on all the frontiers of Europe. There was, too, my official badge, the little silver greyhound.

As, one after the other, I opened the letters, I became the more puzzled. Three were in French, couched in cryptic language, and dated from an address in Toulouse, demanding that I should disclose the identity of “the person to whose name it is needless to refer,” and apparently containing veiled threats.

Had the threats any connection with the urgent warning contained in the letter from Illona, my mysterious wife?

I realized that I was powerless to acknowledge receipt of her letter as I had no knowledge of her address in Lausanne, or of the name of her club in London. Yet she demanded an urgent response telegraphed to both addresses. She awaited my decision. On what point?

Suddenly I saw Joan’s familiar handwriting on an envelope addressed to “Lionel Hipwell, Esq., care of His Britannic Majesty’s Embassy, Madrid,” and, taking out the letter, I observed that it had been written from Queen’s Gate on the fifteenth of March.

When I had obtained my key from the concierge I had seen by the big calendar hanging in his bureau that the date was the twenty-third of April. Hence a little more than a month ago I must have been in Madrid, and there received the letter from my adored one.

It was sad and full of reproaches.

“You were in London two whole days after your return from Athens,” she wrote. “Yet you had no time to come and see me, or to ring me up. You seem so taken up with your new friends, and especially with another woman, that you have no time for me nowadays. I saw you with my own eyes dining with her at the Berkeley. I watched you both, but you did not see me. Next morning I called at Sackville Street, but your new man told me you had left again for Madrid half an hour before.

“Is this treatment fair to me, Lionel? I do not upbraid you if you have transferred your love to this Woman from Nowhere and find her more attractive than myself. Probably she is. Anyhow, she appeared to be very amusing and witty. But at least tell me the truth. Do not continue to mislead me into the belief that you are still mine, I beg of you. A woman’s heart may suffer much, but there is a breaking strain—and mine is very near it!

“You wired from Vienna promising to come and see me instantly on your arrival, yet, instead, you prefer the society of your newly-found charmer. I know that while you are absent we cannot meet and discuss the future. If you wish to break our engagement, please tell me so. Do not be afraid. I can stand the shock, for I am now inured to your neglect and indifference. I shall know when you return from Madrid, and if you do not come to see me then I shall regard your silence as breaking our engagement, and that I myself shall be free, with only the bitter memory of one whom I have loved and still devotedly love.

“Your broken-hearted “Joan.”

Twice I re-read the letter, and divined in it the poignant suffering of a woman’s soul.

What foolish act had I committed? Was I actually wedded to the mysterious Illona, the husband of a woman I could not remember? In my lost existence I had evidently enacted certain follies of which I held no recollection. What were they? One—the inexcusable vice of drug-taking—I had established beyond doubt. How many other ill-advised and irresponsible acts had I performed? Of how many foolish indiscretions had I been culpable?

In my perplexity I stood confused, perhaps half deranged.

Vainly I sought to disentangle the astounding situation, but the more I strove to remember, the darker and more inscrutable the past became. The mystery of it all was incomprehensible. For over two years I had evidently been leading a normal life, with few suspecting that my brain had become unbalanced or that my memory of the past was a blank. I had resolved on mental reservation from the first moment when the shock of my fall in the Embassy dining-room had aroused me to a sense of consciousness of things about me. I dared not make inquiry concerning anything lest my friends should believe me to be mad.

Without doubt the fearful horror of that never-to-be-forgotten night at Camberwell was responsible for the inconceivable state of my mind.

Already some unfortunate facts were only too clear. I had not replied to Joan’s appeal. Hence by my silence our engagement, I supposed, had been broken. But in what circumstances had I married the mysterious Illona, of whose address I was in ignorance and whom I had never seen? I must have married in secret, for Joan had not mentioned it, though she had watched me dining with someone at the Berkeley. Could the woman have been my wife?

What excuse could I make to Joan, tender memories of whom had arisen within me, and whom I loved with all my soul? How could I explain my marriage and my cruel betrayal? The complications were so many that I was frantic with uncertainty and bewilderment.

I renewed the search among my papers. There was a letter dated from Sackville Street signed “Edward Bruce.” Its servile tone showed it to be from my “new man,” as Joan called him. What was he like, I wondered? I pictured a tall, thin, grey-haired servant in morning-coat and grey trousers, very obsequious and discreet. What had become of the faithful Bolland?

Another paper was an account in my own handwriting of some expenses or other amounting to about ninety pounds, while my check-book showed that I had been spending a considerable sum of money, of late, with some furnishing firm in Paris.

Was it possible that I had set up an apartment for my unknown wife, Illona?

I subjected every object I possessed to the most careful scrutiny. Most things puzzled me. Even my clothes I had never set eyes on before. Yet the memoranda I had were written in a firm handwriting, evidently my own.

My brain was, indeed, in a whirl. I felt myself going mad. Therefore, I put on my clothes again, with a light coat over them, and, descending, went out into the silent, deserted street, past the great fountain, the waters of which awakened the echoes, until I found myself at last in that long, straight street, one of the greatest thoroughfares in the world, the famous Corso.

I detected it in the pale-grey light of the morning. The big electric lights were still flaring, and as I passed a silent policeman he politely wished me buon giorno.

I wandered past the Hôtel Russie, and higher up the hill till Rome lay at my feet. It was growing lighter every moment—a pearly-grey light tinged with rose-pink. At last, after my wanderings, I stood—as one day in my long-past youth—upon the site of the ancient Torris Maecentis in the beautiful garden of the Palazzo Colonna and looked around on the extensive view of the towers and cupolas, the palaces and monuments, which, on the seven hills, are modern Rome.

Suddenly I recollected that my father had taken me to that spot when I was about eighteen, to see Rome at dawn.

Again I stood there, to wonder and to think. Below me, bathed in the pale-gold of the rising sun, lay the red roofs of the Eternal City, picturesque, mysterious, the capital of a kingdom. It was a city which, from half effacement consequent on war, led by an ex-revolutionary, had risen to grandeur and prosperity, to a powerful place in Europe. I gazed on the wonderful dome of St. Peter’s, and beside it the colossal tower of Sant’ Angelo, with the winding Tiber and its bridges—Rome—the changeless city since the Christian era.

I knew Rome, but not with the superficiality that the tourist knows it. The modern traveler, swept from his home upon a voyage à forfait by a tourist agency, enjoys the best views, experience, and comfort in the six days allotted to him—often four, alas!—and yet to see Rome even superficially it takes a month. Some, of course, care nothing for ancient monuments, the Coliseum, the Forum, the catacombs, or the haunts of Nero or Tiberius. They like, rather, to take their apéritif at the Aregno, their lunch out at Tivoli, and dine and dance a their hotel, for too often sightseeing is a bore, and one does not believe in the throwing of coppers into the fountain.

Rome is Rome, after all, always the most impressionable capital of Europe. And, it will continue to be that, through all the ages.

In my state of mind these thoughts ran through my bewildered brain. Why, I know not.

If I had forsaken Joan Gell, what had occurred? I realized that, with my father’s fierce hatred of her father, it had been impossible to openly declare my love. We had both agreed on this, and our actions, until that fatal night in Camberwell, had been the acme of discretion. Yet I had indisputable evidence that I had married somebody named Illona; and further, my check-books showed heavy payments to form a home for the latter.

The one part, however, which gripped my brain and dulled my senses, was my admiration for the girl Angela. I knew that we had met before, and, further, I was conscious that she held me as clay in her hands. Her beauty was in my eyes diabolical, her laugh that of a Bacchante, and yet she was entirely irresistible. She was drawing me towards her as surely as a magnet draws a needle.

And I had promised to meet her at the State ball, at the Quirinale, that night.

I tried to resist; but, poor fool that I was, it was useless. Perhaps I may be forgiven on account of the unstable condition of my disordered brain. My mind, I think, had awakened, as I stood there leaning over that lichen-covered stone parapet, gazing across the Eternal City, over which was rising the pale rose and gold of morning. But my soul was still asleep. I was as yet as a man half drugged by a long sleep, in which two years of consciousness had been entirely blotted out.

It was seven o’clock in the morning before I returned to my bedroom at the Excelsior. Without taking off my evening-clothes, I sank upon the bed to sleep, tired and worn, with my brain wrapped still in cotton-wool.

At eleven I was awakened by the telephone ringing; and I answered it.

I heard Lord Kingscliffe’s voice.

“Is that you, Hipwell?” he asked. And when I had replied in the affirmative, he said: “I thought I’d let you know that you’ll have to leave for London to-morrow night. Sorry, Lionel. But you know in the service we are not our own masters.”

“Quite all right,” I replied, wondering why his voice seemed so sympathetic and apologetic.

“I shall see you at the Quirinale to-night. Addio,” His Excellency said.

And I hung up the receiver.

So my visit to Rome was to be cut short. Perhaps, after all, it was better so.

CHAPTER EIGHT. THE DOUBLE NOUGHT

I spent the day wandering about the broad, handsome streets of Rome—Rome under Mussolini. I noted where cobbled piazzas had been bare and dusty there were now bright flower-beds, shady trees, and often refreshing fountains. Around me on every side arose great palatial buildings worthy of the proudest city in the world.

I watched the tourists feeding the pigeons, and took several apéritifs at the popular cafés.

The idea of the State ball, for which I had already received a card from the Minister of the Royal Household, nauseated me. I was in no mood for brilliant throngs, Court etiquette, or dance-music. Yet the Little Countess attracted me. I felt absolutely certain that we had once been friends, but to what extent, or in what circumstances, I was in entire ignorance. My memory concerning her was also a complete blank.

At ten o’clock that night I put on my uniform, and taking my cocked hat and gloves, drove to the Palace, where I passed across the red carpet, and along the great, brilliantly-lit corridor lined by the Royal servants, and the Guards in their brilliant uniforms. With me entered several foreign diplomats with their ladies, including Grant, the secretary of the United States Embassy, whom I recognized as an old friend I had known in Paris.

Assembled in the great salon with five hundred others, we awaited the coming of their Majesties. I gazed eagerly around to discover the Contessina, but was sorely disappointed. She was not present! And yet she herself had pressed me to come and dance with her.

Of a sudden there came the three resounding bangs upon the great gilt double doors. The Marshal of the Court, an aged Duke with snow-white hair and heavy moustache, threw them open, and the King in the full-dress uniform of a General, walking with the Queen, whose diamonds flashed with a thousand fires, entered, smiling at the bowing and curtsying assembly.

Their Majesties, accompanied by the Prince of Savoy and other members of the Italian Royal Family, made a slow tour of the great gilt chamber, with its hundred crystal electroliers; and then, after they had ascended their dais, the dance commenced.

It was not until that moment that, amid the crowd of Roman nobility and the diplomatic circle, I caught sight of the charming girl I sought.

She was dressed in a cloth of silver, the skirt embellished with a broad band of diamanté and pearl embroidery, which reflected the light from a thousand angles—one of the most striking costumes at the Court. I saw her accept a tall, slim attaché of the French Embassy as her partner. Her face, slightly flushed, was as beautiful as the angel of Lanfranco upon the wall of Sant’ Andrea. Afterwards, as I watched, I saw her elegant cavalier, in his gold-braided uniform, hand her over to a well-dressed and rather stiff-looking lady of middle-age; and presently I noticed her chatting merrily with the Princess Pallavicini, the Queen’s principal lady-in-waiting.

Later on, as though quite accidentally, I met her, and bowed low over her hand.

She smiled at me, and expressed satisfaction that we should meet again. Her attitude was much more cordial than on the previous night.

“Lady Kingscliffe told me that you are always traveling,” she said in French, as we stood against the wall together watching the dancers. “I love traveling, but——” And she raised her shoulders expressive of disappointment.

“You do not travel very much?” I asked in the same language.

“Alas! no,” she replied, with a smile. “I want to see London and New York—and Athens.”

“Well, if you traveled as constantly as I do, you would, I fear, grow very tired of trains, Contessina,” I said, noting the exquisite taste of her gown.

“You have been in Rome before, I suppose?” I remarked.

“Yes. Once before. I go out daily with the tourists to see the monuments. It is such great fun—I assure you! But, oh! I do so want to see your London.”

She spoke with an air of greatest refinement, and her eyes, as she looked at me, seemed so childlike and innocent.

“Yet when one is not one’s own mistress, what can one do?” she added.

“Some young ladies become defiant of parents and chaperons,” I laughed. “But I would not advise such a course. Will you honor me with a dance, Contessina, and let us forget all our troubles, eh?”

She accepted my invitation, and a few moments later, we were waltzing together, while Lady Kingscliffe, who, I knew, had been watching, turned away with an amused smile.

Angela charlestoned beautifully. As a dancer myself I had been to many balls, and had had some splendid partners. But this brown-eyed girl of mystery eclipsed them all.

The Baron de Carbonnel, Ambassador of France, who was dancing with the young Princess di Forano, daughter of the Duchess di San Donato, passed us, and I noticed that he smiled at my partner in recognition.

Later, after an enjoyable hour, during which I endeavored, by all the means in my power, to discover more concerning the mysterious girl, I took her in to supper, where we sat down to a tête-à-tête repast.

Around us were many people I recognized, for very slowly my memory was returning. Rospigliosi, with his wife, the Minister Sonnino, Caetani and his daughter, the pretty Donna Stella, and the ever-popular Princess Odescalchi with her wonderful emeralds.

From the chatter of the Little Countess it was apparent that she moved in high circles and was acquainted with many officials.

Later, I led her back to the ballroom.

“M’sieur Hipwell,” whispered the Little Countess just as we were about to dance, “I wonder if you—well, if I dare ask you to do a very great favor for me?”

“Most certainly I will,” was my eager reply.

“Well, I cannot tell you here. Could you meet me—to-morrow? I will be alone.”

“Where?” I asked.

She reflected a moment.

“In the Church of Sant’ Agnese, in the Piazza Navona,” she replied in a low voice. “Would eleven o’clock suit you?”

“Certainly. I will be there.”

And thus it was arranged.

Punctually at the hour she had named I entered the great, domed church, with its huge columns of Cottanello, built upon the spot where Saint Agnes suffered martyrdom. The silent interior was quite dark after the glare of the sun in the piazza outside; but in a few moments I saw a slim figure in a neat navy-blue street-suit, which I instantly recognized as the Contessina’s, standing before the antique statue of San Sebastian. A whispered, timorous greeting and a warm handshake, whereupon she suggested in a low voice:

“Let us talk here. If we go outside somebody who knows you may see us.”

“Bien!” I replied. “There are chairs yonder.” And we crossed to several rush-bottomed chairs near one of the side-altars, before which the light was burning in its red-glass shade. It was evident that she meant to preserve the strictest secrecy, and this very fact increased my interest in her.

“Last night you told me that I could trust you, M’sieur Hipwell,” she said in a low voice, though we were alone in the great church. “I am a mystery to you, I know that.”

“But we have met before. Have we not?” I asked, fixing my eyes on her. She gave vent to a little hysterical laugh.

“You know. But perhaps you have forgotten. You forget many things.”

“But I could never forget you, Contessina!” I declared. “Will you not enlighten my darkness of mind? You tell me that I forget many things.”

“In life there are many things that are surely best forgotten,” she remarked, with a slight sigh.

I paused, not being able to follow her meaning.

She was aware that she puzzled me, and, next instant, with a sweet smile, she went on: “I told you, M’sieur Hipwell, that I trust you. Will you not also take me on trust and do me a little favor which—which will be of the greatest assistance to me—relieve me perhaps of a great peril which threatens to overwhelm me?”

“Peril!” I echoed, staring at her. “In what peril are you? Please be more explicit. I know that we were friends in the past, just as we are friends now. Cannot you give me a single hint which may form a connecting link in my mind between the past and the present?”

“The past is of the past, and matters not,” replied the girl in a serious, philosophic mood. “It is the present and the future which concern both of us—yourself more perhaps than you ever dream.”

She saw perplexity on my face.

“I know that in your present half-consciousness of the past I must be a complete enigma to-day,” she added. “For the present it must be so.” Then her hand slowly stole into mine, and she asked: “Are you willing to do me this one little favor?”

“I will, Contessina, most certainly,” I said at once. “What is it?”

“Not a very difficult mission,” she replied in French, her manner instantly changing. “Now we thoroughly understand each other, eh? You are going to London. Would you take a verbal message for me—to someone——” And she paused. “Ah!” she went on, “I see you wonder why I do not write. But there are times when writing is an indiscretion. Well, this is an instance. True, I could write, but I should most probably seriously jeopardize myself if I did so. I am in a great difficulty—and that is why I venture to ask you to help me.”

“I will assist you willingly,” I repeated.

“Very well, then. When you get to London will you write and make an appointment to meet Mr. Roddy Owen, who lives at Harrington Court, Park Lane?”

“Just a moment,” I interrupted. “I’ll write down the address.” And in the dim light I scribbled it upon my shirt-cuff. I knew Harrington Court as a great block of new and expensive bachelor chambers. “Yes; and when I see him what shall I say?”

“Give him this. It will be your credential, and by it he will know you come from me.” And she pressed something hard and flat into my hand.

I looked at it, and saw that it was a piece of exquisitely carved stone, about two inches long, and with a gold ring in it—a pendant of clear blue aquamarine. It was square, perforated, and carved in antique design, with two circles, the figures double nought—an unique ornament of crystalline beauty.

“Give it to him,” she whispered to me in a strange, hard voice, “and tell him—tell him that—that it is all impossible, and that he must forget. That——”

And she hesitated, trembling, drawing a long breath.

“That it is all impossible—and that he must forget,” I repeated slowly.

“Yes. Impress upon him that he must not write again to me, because it would place me in very grave danger.”

I looked into her beautiful face, much puzzled. In the faint light I saw that my companion’s countenance was now pale and hard, as though what she had said was against her will, and that she was much perturbed.

“That he must not write again,” I repeated. “Yes, I understand. You wish him to break off all communication with you—I take it?”

Again she drew a long breath.

“Yes. Alas! It must be so,” she answered hoarsely. “But tell him that it is not my fault—not my fault. I am acting under compulsion. He—he will understand.”

“Nothing else?”

“Nothing,” she answered in a low, despondent whisper.

Then, after a pause, she added:

“I know, M’sieur Hipwell, that all this must seem very mysterious to you. But when one day you know the truth, you will also know what a great and invaluable service you have rendered one who—well, one who is very, very unhappy!”

“I can see that, Contessina,” was my reply. “Can I do nothing further to assist you? Of course, I do not desire to pry into your private affairs,” I added.

She shook her head sorrowfully, saying:

“No. It is really extremely kind of you to do me this service—one which I value very highly. And after all the—the unpleasantness that has passed. If we ever meet again, which I doubt——”

“But we shall!” I interrupted. “I shall see you and report the result of my interview with Mr. Owen.”

“I don’t know,” was her dubious reply. “I am not staying much longer in Rome.”

“Where will you go?”

“Just where my fancy leads me. Probably to the Italian lakes—possibly to Garda—I love it.”

“And where may I write to you?” I asked eagerly.

For some time she reflected. At last she said:

“Address me: ‘Ferma in Posta, Gardone—Lake of Garda.’ ”

“Gardone!” I exclaimed. “I was once there! How beautiful it is! The big white hotel, the palms and the flowers, the tiny village, and the blue lake stretching away to the mountains.”

“Yes. It is very charming. I shall probably go there.”

“And your home?” I ventured to ask.

“No, M’sieur Hipwell. You said you did not desire to inquire into my private affairs, so the whereabouts of my home is a secret. Treat me still as a mystery—just a mystery, that is all!”

I was sorely disappointed. It had been within my experience that certain girls loved to assume an air of mystery in order to further interest men; but in Angela’s case it was different. There was some deep, underlying motive for it all. Her intense seriousness impressed me with an air of romantic tragedy, while her admission of unpleasantness between us in the past drove me to desperation.

I tried again to learn her true nationality and where she lived. I felt certain that Lady Kingscliffe knew, but that for some reason she was preserving the secret. Adventuresses are not received at table in any British Embassy abroad, though some, who could be named, have dined with Cabinet Ministers at home.

My suggestion that we should take a taxi and go for a run in the sunshine out to Tivoli she would not accept.

“I am very sorry. But for certain reasons I am compelled to be discreet. I have an appointment for luncheon at twelve,” she said. “No. We must say adieu here. It is really most generous of you to convey my message.”

“I will write to you, Contessina,” I promised, “and when I am next in Italy—perhaps in a month’s time—I will make a point of seeing you, and telling you the result of my interview.”

“There can be no result,” she exclaimed blankly. Just then a noisy party of British tourists entered the church with their guide.

“But I shall see you, nevertheless,” I declared. Whereat she smiled.

Then at the door I took her gloved hand, and watched her neatly-dressed figure cross the sun-blanched piazza. Afterwards I sauntered out myself, strolling back to the Excelsior, more puzzled than ever.

CHAPTER NINE. AN ODD MISSION

On the following Monday afternoon I alighted at Calais Maritime from the dusty wagon-lit of the Rome express, glad to stretch my legs after the long journey. On board the Dover boat the wind blew fresh and the crossing, to me, was pleasant; but to many others I fear, it was the reverse.

In due course, after tea in the Pullman, I arrived at Victoria, and in consequence of my official laisser-passer I was soon in a taxi and away to Downing Street, to deliver my dispatches from Sir Richard Kingscliffe. Then, re-entering the cab, I drove to Sackville Street. To my knowledge I had not set foot in my rooms for two whole years.

A complete stranger, who I supposed was Edward Bruce, my new man, Bolland’s successor, threw open the door, bowing me a rather stiff welcome. And then, taking my bags from the taxi-man, he followed me into my small but rather cosy sitting-room. Bruce was quite unlike what I had pictured him, rather tall, young, and slim, with immaculate clothes that fitted him well—evidently a well-trained servant.

“Miss Gell has rung up three times to-day, sir, to inquire if you have returned. She wishes you to speak to her as soon as you possibly can,” he said, handing me about a dozen letters.

I paused for a second. What could I say to Joan?

“Anything else?” I asked.

“Your father called yesterday, sir. He thought you were back. I think he has written to you.”

“Any other callers?” I asked, as he helped me off with my coat.

“Only the blind young gentleman, sir.”

“Blind young gentleman!” I exclaimed, surprised. “Who is he?”

“I don’t know his name, sir. But he continually calls to know when you will be back. He says he knows you, sir.”

“What kind of a man is he?”

“Oh, he’s a young gentleman who wears black glasses. But, poor fellow, he’s stone blind. He finds his way up all right, but I always have to lead him down the stairs and out into the street, till he finds the curb, and taps along it with his stick.”

“I wonder who he is,” I remarked aloud to myself.

“I don’t know, sir. I thought you knew him. He gave me that impression,” Bruce replied. “Will you be at home to him the next time he calls?”

I pondered. The fact that the caller was sightless reminded me of my mysterious and inexplicable escape from the sentence of blindness passed on me by that girl criminal, Lisely Hatten, in Camberwell.

“I will see him if he comes again,” I replied. And then, seating myself at my old bureau which I well remembered—for, indeed, all my belongings now became as familiar to me as though I had never been absent or lost an hour of my life—I turned my attention to the accumulation of letters. Many of them were tradesmen’s bills.

One was a rather heavy account for wine supplied a year before, and as I seldom drink wine, it surprised me. Possibly my friends had drunk the three dozen of champagne. I certainly had not. With it was an account for expensive cigars, and, as I had never smoked anything but cigarettes in my life, I knew that I had not been the consumer of such luxuries.

“Bruce!” I called to my man. “How long have you been with me now?”

“Nine months next Thursday, sir. By the way, sir, I hear that Bolland hasn’t got anything to do since you discharged him for dishonesty.”

Dishonesty! So I had found out Bolland as a thief, and surely here was good testimony that he had ordered things on my account, and had probably disposed of them in secret.

“If a man is dishonest he must be punished,” I said abruptly. Bruce then asked whether I intended to dine at home. I answered negatively and he returned to his pantry.

The first private letter I opened was in a handwriting now familiar to me, and signed, “Your ever affectionate wife, Illona.”

Illona! My wife. The woman on whom I had never set eyes.

Dated from Lausanne a fortnight before, it had been addressed to “Lionel Hipwell, Esq., King’s Foreign Service Messenger, care of His Britannic Majesty’s Embassy, Madrid,” and then it had been sent back to Sackville Street.

“My Adored Husband,” wrote the mysterious Illona. “Do, I beg of you, take the greatest care of yourself. Every hour I fear for your safety. You know their secret, and there is a desperate plot against you, I know. Always go armed and never relax vigilance when you travel. Beware of a trap, and if you meet a blind man, be careful to avoid him. Come back to me at the earliest moment you can. I await you, darling. Do not delay. Every hour that passes increases my anxiety regarding your dear self.”

I re-read the strange warning. “Beware of a trap, and if you meet a blind man, be careful to avoid him.”

Was he the blind stranger who so persistently called? And the trap? Was my strange mission at the request of the Little Countess the trap of which my unknown wife warned me?

I pursed my lips and pondered deeply.

An instant later the telephone, upon my table, rang. Involuntarily, I took up the receiver and answered.

“Hulloa, Lionel!” cried Joan, whose merry voice I recognized instantly. “I got your excuse for not writing and I forgive you. So you’re back at last! You were due from Rome two days ago. Are you seeing me to-night, or are you too tired?”

“Tired! I am never too tired to see you, dearest,” I cried, in as gallant a manner as my poor, perturbed brain would allow. “Where shall we meet?”

“Mother and father are going to the Lord Chancellor’s reception at ten o’clock. Come here at half-past, eh?”

“Very well,” I replied. “I’ll dine at the club, and come on after ten o’clock.”

“Did you have a good journey?” she asked. “I hope you won’t be in one of your moods, you know. The last time you came to see me you were horrible. But I know, dear, you won’t be to-night, will you—for my sake?”

“I was really unconscious of being horrible,” I laughed, “so do forgive me. I’ll try and behave better to-night.”

“Righto! And don’t forget your promise—eh?” laughed the girl I so dearly loved. Then she rang off.

Another mystery! What quarrel had ensued between us? Of what bad behavior had I been unconsciously guilty—and when?

After two years I was to see Joan again! And yet, I was already married—married to a woman I had never consciously seen.

Imagine my feelings as I sat that evening eating my dinner alone in the St. James’s Club, torn by a thousand apprehensions of having betrayed my best friends by making undesirable acquaintances, and, furthermore, by contracting a hazardous and incomprehensible marriage.

What was I to say to Joan?

A little soup, and I could eat nothing more. It was half-past eight, and, in order to carry out my promise to the Contessina, I went into the hall and rang up Mr. Roddy Owen, at Harrington Court.

A man who spoke with a foreign accent and who was evidently a servant answered, and asked who I was. My reply was that I desired to speak with Mr. Owen himself.

In a few moments a man’s gruff voice said, “Owen speaking. What do you want?”

“I want to see you this evening,” I replied. “You do not know me, but I am bearer of a verbal message to you—from a friend of yours in Rome.”

“Rome?” he echoed. “Oh, yes, thanks. I’ll be delighted to meet you—what name?”

“Hipwell,” I replied. “May I call—say in half an hour?”

“Certainly,” he replied. “I’ll wait in for you, Mr. Hipwell. Thanks for taking the trouble to find me. About nine o’clock, eh? Good-bye.”

And I hung up the receiver.

With memory of my unknown wife’s warning, I had put my Browning into my pocket, and resolved always to keep it there. Yet surely there could be no plot in my rather quixotic promise to help a young girl in distress.

I felt in my waistcoat-pocket. My passport, the beautiful little pendant of carved and pierced aquamarine, was there. So I took my coffee and cigarette, and just after nine a taxi set me down before Harrington Court, that great block of flats in Park Lane.

The elevator took me to the fourth-floor. When the elevator-man pressed the bell at one of the doors, an elderly servant bowed me in.

Next moment, a tall, rather fair-haired man of about thirty, in dinner-jacket, advanced to meet me with a welcoming smile. He was a clean-limbed young man of athletic build, and somewhat hatchet-faced, without much color, but with an eye like a gimlet.

“Mr. Hipwell, I presume,” he said. “Come along in.” And he conducted me to a fine and beautifully furnished sitting-room, with soft lounge chairs and several precious works of art. “You have come from Rome,” he said, offering me a cigarette from a large silver box. “And you are good enough to call on me. At the outset I thank you very sincerely.” He spoke with great refinement, his speech being reminiscent of Oxford, where I myself had been.

“I am carrying out a promise which I made to a lady who is our mutual friend,” I explained.

I looked around the handsome apartment, but could see no evidence of the plot of which I had been so mysteriously forewarned.

“From Angela, I suppose,” he said, in a low, intense voice, his manner altering instantly. “You have seen her, eh?”

“I have,” I replied, and taking out the little pendant of clear, blue stone, I handed it to him. “She told me to give you this.”

He took it in his trembling fingers and gazed intently at it. So strange was the look in his eyes that it almost seemed as though sight of the innocent looking little pendant with its two figure noughts entwined, horrified, or even terrified him!

At that moment, something happened in my confused brain. What it was I know not. A great weight seemed lifted from it. In a flash an astounding truth dawned on me, and my lost consciousness became suddenly restored.

Angela’s face had been familiar to me from the first moment I had found myself seated at her side in Rome. Now, in a second, I realized that the girl I knew as Angela Ugostini, “the Little Countess,” was the same auburn-haired girl who had been so eager to put out my eyes with a pin on that fateful night in Camberwell!

The discovery held me dumb. I had actually, in my ignorance, been attracted by my worst enemy, Lisely Hatten, the criminal who worked as a City typist. She had put me to the test in Rome. And finding that I had not recognized her, she had sent me on that strange mission with the piece of carved blue aquamarine.

I tried to remain calm, wondering whether the man I was visiting knew the truth concerning me.

“I have a message to you from the Contessina,” I said. “She tells you that she cannot write. The message is that it is all impossible, and that you must forget.”

What was the nature of the romance, I wondered?

The face of the man addressed, standing in the centre of the room with the little piece of blue shining stone in his hand, went pale as death.

“Impossible!” he echoed breathlessly. “What—what in heaven’s name does she mean? Why has she not written? Forget? How—how can I ever forget?”

“That is the message. Of its meaning I am in ignorance,” I declared. “The lady wishes to impress on you the serious peril in which she will be placed if you write to her again. You must not write.”

“Not write!” he gasped despairingly. “Then she has ended it all—ended it!”

“Not of her own free will,” I assured him. “She told me so. Of course, I know nothing whatever of the circumstances, but she impressed on me that it is necessary, in both your interests, to break off all communication with you.”

“And Lisely desires it so?” he asked, in a low strained voice, his lips trembling.

“Yes. She desires it so,” was my reply. “You call her Lisely. I know her as Angela!” I said.

A long silence fell between us. At last Owen spoke.

“Her real name does not matter,” he said slowly, in a voice full of emotion. “You will guess—and you will understand. A blow—a great blow, the greatest of all my life—has fallen upon me!” Then, after a a pause, he added: “I was a fool—all men are fools where women are concerned. But—but I ought to have known. My own common sense ought to have prevented me from—from——”

He swallowed, with an effort, a lump that had arisen in his throat, and put out his hand to me, saying:

“Thank you, for bringing this message to me. But—but it is a blow from which I can never recover—never! Instinctively I know that you are my friend. All cosmopolitans, like you and myself, are friends. You will know and will understand. I cannot explain the facts, because exposure would place our mutual lady friend in serious jeopardy. I can only thank you—yet—yet what you have told me has in a moment swept away all my future.”

“You, no doubt, know more than I can gather from the bald, rather cryptic message that I have brought you. I mean that it conveys to you much more,” I said, bewildered at the discovery that Angela, the Little Countess, and the girl criminal were one and the same. But I kept my own counsel and allowed him to know nothing.

“Yes, much. I know exactly what she means.” Then he eagerly inquired about her and the circumstances in which we had met. To all his questions I replied quite frankly. So dejected and despairing was the young fellow that I felt sorry for him. Surely he could not be acting!

I knew that I was Cupid’s messenger, yet the whole circumstances were so romantic and mysterious that I felt an intense interest in them all. The one thing that really puzzled me most was the reason Lady Kingscliffe had preserved the secret of the girl’s identity.

The young man Owen had sunk into a chair, and was sitting with his eyes fixed across the room, seeing nothing.

“I am absolutely forbidden to write to her, eh?” he asked, utterly crushed.

“That was the message I was to deliver to you. She dare not write—and she will be in peril if you send her a letter. She said that you would quite understand.”

“Understand?” he cried suddenly, his eyes gleaming. “Understand? Yes, I understand. I—I understand—only—too—well,” he added, with the bitterness of despair in his voice. “Forgive me, Mr. Hipwell,” he craved next second. “I—I’m much obliged to you for troubling to come here. If you knew—knew what all this means to both of us—if you knew the truth, you would understand.”

“But can’t you tell me? I’m so completely in the dark,” I said, absolutely mystified and full of eagerness to obtain a clue to the mystery.

“No,” he replied in a low voice. “I have to respect the wishes of Lisely.” Then after a pause, he muttered to himself:

“So she is in Italy! Why, in heaven’s name, did she venture there? It was foolish—very foolish and dangerous! But I suppose there is some motive for it. There is always a motive in a woman’s fancies.”

“Remember,” I said, “that in sending you that message she is acting against her will.”

“I know. I pity her. Poor Lisely! She is acting under compulsion. Some people are born to despair. We are of those. And she is in Rome! I wonder why? I was there with her a year ago when—when I thought—I believed—I dreamed——”

He clenched his fists fiercely and, springing from his chair, crossed to the window.

“Forgive me, Mr. Hipwell,” he said again.

And soon afterwards I left.

CHAPTER TEN. THE WIND OF CIRCUMSTANCE

Reader, I beg of you to put yourself for a moment in my place. My unfortunate position, as a straw blown upon the adverse wind of circumstance, had become intolerable.

As I sat back in the taxi which took me down Knightsbridge towards Queen’s Gate, I felt myself bordering on madness, aroused by the sea of perplexity and doubt into which I found myself plunged.

What could I say in explanation to Joan? She was my fiancée. And yet I had a mysterious “wife” who, from her letters, “adored” me, and was living in Lausanne!

She had warned me against a man who was blind.

And a sightless man had been a constant caller at Sackville Street. Was his presence part of a plot against me?

On reflection, I could discern no reason or motive why I should be followed and done to death by the obscure plotters of whom the unknown Illona had warned me. Her letters were missives full of affection, and apparently she loved me. At least, she showed herself keenly solicitous of my welfare. Yet, as the taxi sped along amid the lights of London, I found myself smiling that there was a woman who, against my knowledge and inclination, was able to pose before the world as Mrs. Lionel Hipwell!

What an interesting tangle for the President of the Admiralty and Divorce Division!

I alighted at the big, deep portico at Queen’s Gate, and, on ringing the bell, old Forbes, the faithful servant of the eminent King’s Counsel, admitted me, saying:

“Glad to see you back, sir. I hope you’ve had a nice journey.”

“Thanks, Forbes, yes. Is Miss Joan upstairs?”

“In the drawing-room, sir,” replied the white-headed old man, taking my hat and coat, and leaving me to ascend the broad flight of thickly carpeted stairs.

“My darling Lionel!” cried my fiancée, rushing up to meet me as I opened the door of the long, handsome room. “Oh! I’m so glad you are back again safely!” and placing her soft, bare arms around my neck, she drew down my head, and kissed me fondly upon the lips, as I reciprocated. She was in a sleeveless dress of plain black which enhanced the whiteness of her chest and arms.

“Come and sit in our usual corner,” she said, inviting me to a cozy nook near one of the windows. “Poor dear! You must be horribly tired after your long journey. I telephoned to the inquiry office at Victoria, and they told me that the boat train was late because of heavy weather in the Channel.”

“Bad weather very fortunately does not affect me,” I laughed. “I only suffer from delay, not from mal-de-mer, or I’d not be doing messenger work for the Foreign Office, I suppose!”

“Darling, you ought to have taken that post of attaché at Madrid which was offered you. I can’t understand why you refused it.”

I remained silent. Never to my knowledge had such a post been offered to me. What could I, in my ignorance, reply?

“I suppose the governor was furious—eh?” I laughed nervously.

“Your father was extremely angry. He had arranged everything, and you would have started on a very fine diplomatic career; yet, to his great disappointment, you blankly refused.”

“It would have ended all my ambitions to sit in Parliament,” I said, for want of any other explanation to offer.

“But has not your present position as King’s Foreign Service Messenger—highly responsible as it certainly is—ended your chance of putting up for election?” she asked, her white soft arm still clinging around me.

As I looked into her wonderful, fathomless eyes, all my lost passion for her instantly returned. Yes, I was still as deeply in love with her as I had been before that night of my lost consciousness. Yet what had occurred between us while I had been in that vague and incompetent state of mind?

I wondered. Because of my bewilderment I spoke little, leaving my beloved to talk, and hoping to glean from her words the secret of the past void in my life. What else could I do?

She gave me a cigarette from her pretty mother-of-pearl case, lit one herself, and then, leaning back upon the crimson silk couch, looked up into my eyes and chattered on. At first she told me how she had spent the last fortnight at a country house down in Devonshire, and afterwards with the Mellors, who had, as usual, a gay house-party. She spoke of many people whose names I vaguely remembered, and told me how, in the long vacation, her father had promised to take her to Norway.

“We go first to Copenhagen, then to Stockholm, then by train to Oslo, and up to Bergen, where we catch the steamer right up the fiords to Tromsö, and back to Hull. Won’t it be delightful? I do wish you could come with us.”

“I wish I could, darling, but I fear that while others are by the sea this summer, I shall be upon the railways of Europe, half stifled in those trains of luxury, as they are termed. I agree that they are luxury for one night only, but when one is doomed to spend half one’s days in them, life becomes horribly tedious, with the same faces of the brown-uniformed attendants, the same fleeting landscape that you have seen a hundred times, and the never-changing restaurant menu, gobbled down by a rambling host of summer tourists. Certainly there is the cabane diplomatique—the two-berth compartment reserved on every train-de-luxe across the Continent—but days and nights alone in it are very tedious and monotonous, I assure you,” I said.

“I know what it must be,” my darling responded with sympathy, “but you must remember that you chose your life yourself after your unfortunate accident.”

Accident? I knew of no accident! What, I wondered, could have happened to me?

“Yes,” I faltered. “I know. But I’m not quite clear, even now, as to what actually happened.”

“Well, you very nearly lost your life. That is quite evident,” Joan said. “And ever since, Lionel, permit me to say so, you have not been the same, either to your father, to me, or to any of your friends.”

“I really didn’t know that,” I laughed faintly.

“I know you don’t. You’ve told me so a dozen times. But the fact remains. You don’t even remember what happened,” she said. “All we know is, that one very foggy night two years ago you were seen stumbling along the Old Kent Road, and suddenly you left the pavement, evidently in an attempt to cross the road. Your gait was very uneven, according to a woman who saw you, and she believed you to be drunk. Next moment a taxi, creeping along through the fog, caught you. The wing hit you and flung you some distance, and when you were picked up, you were unconscious. You were seriously injured, and the police took you to Guy’s Hospital, where I saw you, as soon as we got back from the Riviera a month later. You were there six weeks, and when you were discharged, darling, you seemed to me to be a changed man.”

“I suppose I really am changed,” I said in all sincerity. What she had revealed to me was entirely new. I had certainly no knowledge of any such occurrence on that night of horror.

“You puzzled all the doctors as well as us. How came you dressed as a working-man, and what could possibly have taken you to such a poor quarter of London? Do tell me, Lionel. I’ve asked you dozens of times, and you have never told me the truth.”

“Because I myself am unaware of what really happened,” I assured her. “I know no more how I came to be in the Old Kent Road that night than you do.”

I paused in the manner of one groping for something more convincing to add.

“Really, darling, that sounds most absurd. You surely know what caused you to assume the clothes of a working-man, and the motive of your visit to South London.”

I paused before replying.

“I suppose I must have had some motive,” I said vaguely. “But I really forget.”

“There you are—evading my questions, just as you always do!”

I placed my hand upon her bare shoulder, and looking earnestly into her beautiful eyes, asked:

“Joan, will you believe me when I tell you frankly and honestly, that I have no knowledge of what happened to me?”

“Perhaps not after you were knocked down. But, darling, you surely know why you went to South London that foggy night?”

I paused.

“Yes,” I admitted. “I had a motive. It concerned a secret.”

“Of what?” she asked, instantly interested.

“A diplomatic secret,” I replied, hoping to extricate myself from an impasse.

She smiled disbelievingly. I saw it in her face. No man can deceive the woman who loves him. Only fools try it, fools of any age and in any sphere of life. Woman’s brain is far more acute than man’s, as every man knows. She has an amazing sense of intuition of the truth which a man always lacks, a somehow keener sense of actual happenings, and is never misled as a man can be.

Man, in his superiority over the gentler sex, always believes himself invulnerable in matters of wits or subterfuge. But woman, with her quiet, finer, and more developed instincts, always wins in such struggles.

And I knew that my beloved Joan held the advantage.

“You Foreign Office people have strange secrets, it seems. During the war I could have believed that there might be spies in South London. But now that there is peace, what plotting can there possibly be?”

“We always have internal plots in England, formed by the dissatisfied party—whatever it may be from time to time—according to the criticisms of the Press,” I laughed, in an endeavor to lead her away from her actual point. But it was useless. Yet how could I confess to her my craven cowardice on that night when the well-known criminal met his death in Bloomsbury?

No one had connected me with the tragedy—not even the woman who loved him. She had declared, that night when I had come upon that criminal gang, that I was not the man her lover had attacked on the curb. That had certainly saved me from arrest as an alleged murderer. But, it had brought the awful consequences of that foggy night.

I loved Joan with all my heart and with all my soul. She was my affinity, without her presence and her sweet affection I could not live; and yet, behind it all was that demoniacal shadow on me—that frightful nightmare of my newly awakened existence—Illona, my wife.

In the darkness of the past night, as the great express had roared and rocked across the P.L.M. from Rome to Calais, I had lain in my narrow sleeping-berth, confused and wondering, dreading to meet my beloved, because I knew not what explanation to give.

What would you have done, my reader of this strange adventure, had you been an ordinary man like myself? Put yourself in my place. I loved sub rosa and in secret—because of the anger of my father—one of the most popular and charming girls in all London, and yet, after two years, I had found myself still as a straw drifting on the wind, still in fear lest she should learn the truth.

I could well see that she doubted me. Was it any wonder? All my explanations were terribly lame, I knew. And, worse still, on it all lay that heavy fact that I had betrayed her love, that I was already married.

It was on my tongue to make a clean confession of the whole affair, as I suppose I really ought to have done. However, I hesitated, because I felt that before I could reveal the whole story, I must seek the truth concerning my union with a woman of whom I knew nothing—Illona.

She questioned me, but I fear I was too engrossed in my own thoughts to respond intelligibly.

“You see, you never tell me the real truth, Lionel,” she exclaimed at last. “You are always so very reticent, so strange as compared with your old self. I never can understand you nowadays.”

“I haven’t been well,” I replied in excuse.

“Yet you do your service for the Foreign Office, constantly traveling to the capitals. You are robust, and hearty, and never ail for a moment.”

“Since my—my accident, I fear I have not been the same, dearest,” I said, taking her soft hand and caressing it. “Do forgive me. It is not all my fault. You must trust me, Joan dear.”

She turned her sweet face towards me, and our lips met.

“Of course, my darling. I know I’m hard on you sometimes, but when I sit at home here, and think, during the days you are abroad, I—well, I can’t describe my feelings, except that it seems to me that you are never frank with me—that you are concealing something very important from me.”

“I certainly am not,” I responded, with a vain attempt to be bold beneath my love’s searching gaze.

“But, Lionel, you are—and you know quite well you are,” she replied. “You have something on your mind that I ought to know, and yet you will never reveal it. All you Foreign Office people are the most secretive persons on earth. Sir George, Jack Denham, and Tommie Tennant are all the same. I was in love with Jack once, as you know, and he was just the same as you are—spoke in enigmas and smiled mysteriously if I asked him to explain.”

“My dear Joan,” I said, “one of the first lessons one learns at Downing Street is never to allow one’s left hand to know what one’s right hand does.”

“And you’ve evidently learnt that lesson well, my dear Lionel,” said the girl, with that quiet philosophy that became the daughter of the eminent King’s Counsel.

“My darling,” I said, placing my arm about her waist and kissing her upon the lips, “we are here alone to-night after my journey to Rome. Why not let us enjoy this evening rather than allow ourselves to be at cross-purposes? I love you, Joan!” I cried passionately, kissing her again and again. “To me, you are my world, my all. Can I say more?”

She drew herself slowly but deliberately from my embrace, and in a low, changed voice said:

“Yes, darling. You can tell me the truth if you like.”

“Of what?” I cried, with affected concern.

My feigned bewilderment did not impress her. With her woman’s clever intuition she saw instantly that my assumed ignorance was mere pretence.

“What has arisen to be a bar against our happiness?” she asked in a low, hard voice. “You know what it is. If you are an honest man, Lionel, you will tell me the truth!”

The truth! How could I tell my dearest, when I knew not the truth myself?

CHAPTER ELEVEN. MY FATHER’S STORY

While I was still sitting in argument with Joan, her father—stout, hale, and hearty—returned.

“Hulloa, Lionel!” he exclaimed, greeting me in his usual cheery manner. “Back again, eh? Joan said you’ve been to Rome. How are things there? We were there at the Grand two years ago. I had to appear in a bank case, and I went over to get some information.”

“Oh, Rome is always Rome, you know,” I laughed. “Sir Richard Kingscliffe and Lady Betty are well. We spoke of you.”

“He wrote me a month ago, saying they were coming over on leave in a few weeks. My wife has invited them to stay with us, instead of going to a hotel.”

“Lady Kingscliffe told me so.”

“I expect Sir Richard finds his post pretty difficult under the Mussolini régime, eh?” remarked the great King’s Counsel, whose name was so well known throughout the land. A stout, clean-shaven, bald-headed man, with a somewhat arrogant manner when in Court, he was a terror as a cross-examiner. From the Recordership of Reading, he had been invited twice by the Lord Chancellor to accept a judgeship, but had refused on both occasions. He had told me that a judicial seat did not appeal to him after his constant work at the Bar, for his briefs were among the most highly marked of any man in the Temple.

To become a judge meant a loss of quite fifteen to twenty thousand a year. Hence, the reason was not far to seek. One often regrets that English judges are so poorly paid, and that when they attain the plums of the legal profession they are given a rather worthless knighthood, and receive only a living wage, considering the dignity they are compelled to support So, often the greatest legal men prefer to remain at the Bar, while others of fewer mental attainments wear judicial robes.

Everyone knew John Gell. He dined out a great deal, his ponderous personality being a most lovable one. He had the habit of smoking unusually large cigars, and when he laughed his stomach rose and fell, until his hilarity became contagious. In all London no after-dinner speaker was more witty. The reporters were ever on the alert for some bon mot from his lips.

He took me from Joan’s side into the dining-room and compelled me to have a night-cap with him—a gin and soda with half a lemon squeezed into it, and a chunk of ice.

Suddenly he turned to me, and asked:

“Do you feel better than you did, my boy? Before you left you complained of bad pains in the head. Joan has been very anxious about you.”

“I feel better,” I replied. “But I suppose it is the result of my accident.”

“You certainly had a very narrow squeak,” replied the great lawyer. “When I heard you were at Guy’s I went down at once to see you. Bellamy, the surgeon, had very little hope of your recovery. Still, that’s all over, and you seem fit enough, or you wouldn’t be able to do the long journeys to the capitals.”

How I wished I dared confide in him all that had happened to me, and my strange awakening in Rome. I thought it best, however, to confide in no one except my own father.

I had rung him up before dinner and learnt that he had gone down to Bulwick on the previous day.

Therefore, early on the following morning I left King’s Cross, and at noon the car met me and took me up through the park to my old home.

The spacious old Tudor mansion, with its tall, twisted chimneys and castellated turret, was unchanged, though for over two years, to my knowledge, I had not seen it. The dear old governor, in his gardening suit and faded straw hat, came out to greet me.

In town he was always well dressed, even dandified, a well-known figure in the Park on Sundays, and often declared to be one of the smartest of the elderly brigade in the House. But at home he always enjoyed the ease of old clothes, with the comfort of old slippers in the evening.

“Well, my boy!” he cried. “I’m so glad to get you home again. You seldom come down here nowadays. But there! You surely have sufficient traveling.”

We walked through the open French windows of the old-fashioned morning-room, with its cool chintz covers—the room which my poor mother had so dearly loved. In the centre of the polished table stood a great bowl of yellow, sweet-scented roses, while upon a side-table stood a blue china bowl of pot-pourri.

We threw ourselves into deep arm-chairs opposite each other, and then I exclaimed:

“The reason I’ve come home is because I want to speak seriously with you, dad.”

“My dear boy. Just say what you like. If you wish to confide anything to me, you know that I am always discreet in your interests.”

I paused, hardly knowing how to begin.

“You were good enough to obtain for me a post abroad, were you not?”

“I managed to get you a good opening in the diplomatic service, my boy, and I confess I was sorely hurt and disappointed when you refused to accept it. I can’t make out your motive even now.”

“Neither can I,” was my reply. “For the first time last night had I any knowledge of it.”

“What?” cried my father. “What are you saying? For the first time last night you knew about it? Why, my dear boy, you must be dreaming.”

“I have been dreaming for over two years,” I admitted. “And only now do I find myself fully awake.”

My father arose and stood erect in front of me.

“Look here, Lionel,” he remarked very seriously, “are you joking? If so, it is misplaced humor.”

“I am not joking, dad,” I said. “I’m terribly in earnest. And it is to—to tell you what I know that I am here to-day.”

“What do you know?”

“Of what happened to me on that night you met me at Denmark Hill.”

“You were run down in the Old Kent Road, and narrowly escaped being killed,” my father replied.

“Has there been any suspicion that I am the man the police wanted for the affair in Bloomsbury?” I asked eagerly.

“No. You have never been identified. Therefore dismiss the whole miserable affair from your mind for ever.”

“Ah! That’s just it! I cannot dismiss it because—well, something happened to me after I left you that night—something very serious, a mystery even to this moment; something which has connection with the tragedy in Bloomsbury. For some unknown reason I exist to-day in deadly peril.”

“Tell me all about it!” my father said anxiously. “In what peril are you?”

For the next half hour I sat revealing to him the whole truth, just as I have already written it down in these pages, while he sat staring at me in surprise, scarcely uttering a word.

Except the facts that I loved Joan Gell and that I had received letters from the mysterious Illona, who declared herself my wife, I concealed nothing. I described all that had happened—my strange awakening in Rome, my meeting with the Little Countess, and the sudden realization that she was none other than the humble typist, Lisely Hatten, one of a desperate gang of shop-window jewel-thieves, who had made that cruel and inhuman suggestion to put out my eyes, so that I could never identify her or her criminal associates.

“But she must be exposed, my boy,” my father declared. “Now that you have recognized her, Kingscliffe should be informed at once. Why is she masquerading in Italy as the daughter of an Italian Count?”

“Ah, that is yet another mystery!” was my reply. “I confess that I am utterly and completely bewildered.”

“My dear boy, and so am I! If I were you I would see the Foreign Secretary. Shall I see him for you? He is a great friend of mine, as you know.”

“No, father. Let me solve the mystery. I will remain alert, and try to discover what plot is afoot. There must be some great and well organized conspiracy which takes a girl member of a criminal gang to become a guest at the Quirinale.”

“Through Sir Richard, you can always have private audience with His Excellency the Duce,” my father remarked. “But all you tell me bewilders me, my boy. I can’t make head or tail of it. What can have happened to you after the girl Lisely gave you that injection?”

“Ah, that I don’t know! From that very moment until I fell beneath the dining-table at the Embassy, I was entirely unconscious and oblivious of everything. Yet the girl who gave me the injection—that wild girl who suggested that I be blinded—was, on my return to my normal senses, most charming to me. No doubt she had realized that I did not know her; hence she felt herself safe and sent me upon that sentimental mission to her lover.”

“The strangest story I have ever heard!” declared my father, who, after all, was a hard-headed man, a figure in post-war politics. As an English country gentleman, he was, too, a whole-hearted hater of the Russian Soviets and all their ways.

“Yes,” I said. “It is all strange, all inconceivable, that I should by no fault of mine have earned the deadly enmity of those who now pose as my friends.”

I wondered whether to tell him of the strange communications from Illona. Surely it were better for the present to keep the matter to myself!

We had lunch in the big old dining-room, where, around the dark, paneled walls, were portraits of my ancestors. My father spoke little, apparently absorbed in the strange story of my misfortune, and my consequent unconsciousness.

Both of us ate little, being too full of our own perplexed thoughts.

Afterwards, when we smoked over our coffee on the front veranda—which overlooked the lawn, with its border of lilacs and roses, and the delightful woods beyond—my father suddenly asked:

“And what do you now propose to do, my boy?”

“I really don’t know, dad.”

“Well, your first effort to discover the truth is to approach this strange woman, the Little Countess,” he said. “It was she who injected into your body some drug which caused you that long period of loss of memory. Still pretend that you do not recognize her, and no doubt you will discover some clue to the amazing situation in which you find yourself to-day. At the bottom of it all, you will find that the friends of the man who accidentally shot himself in Bloomsbury instead of murdering you, and who was afterwards identified by his finger-prints as a notorious criminal, have some great interest in hounding you to your peril.”

“But why?” I asked, puzzled as ever. “I did nothing. I raised no hand except in self-defense.”

“You saw him—you saw the others associated in that house on that foggy night. For that reason they fear you; hence their hands are raised against you. No, my dear boy, you must exercise the greatest discretion and precaution, or you may still fall their victim.”

I recollected that strange letter penned by my anxious wife, the mysterious Illona. She held the same opinion as did my dear old governor, that I was in some deadly and mysterious peril.

Quite late into the afternoon we both sat in the long cane lounge-chairs drowsily thinking.

“What you have told me to-day explains much, my boy,” my father said reflectively at last. “Often I have watched you, and wondered in anxiety at your strangeness of manner and your apparent obliviousness of the past. Sometimes I grew impatient because I could not follow the trend of your thoughts. You seemed ridiculously regardless of the past, and more often than not you made statements which, on the face of them, were absurd. Look here, my boy,” he said, laying his hand upon my shoulder with paternal affection, “I confess now to you that I often wondered if you had really taken leave of your senses. Now, I know too well that you have not been yourself. Hence I apologize to you for my shortness of temper.”

“There’s no need for apology, dad,” I declared. “I’ve never been in a fit state of mind to appreciate even your love for me, or your suspicions of my demented state—for, after all, I must have been half mad all these many months.”

“My poor boy, I really think you must have been,” he said, gripping my shoulder with his tender hand. He and I had always been the firmest friends ever since the death of my dear, sainted mother, whose pet I had always been since my Eton days.

I, however, told him nothing of that dark shadow on me—the discovery that I was married to a woman whom I did not know.

We discussed the curious warning I had had concerning the evil intended by a blind man, and the sightless individual who had called on me during my absence.

“You should not meet him, but keep alert and watchful,” he advised. “When he comes, follow him, and see where he lives and with whom he associates,” the governor suggested.

That was my idea, for I resolved to leave no stone unturned to solve the inexplicable mystery.

All was bewildering. The more we discussed it, the deeper seemed the plot against me. But with what motive? What had I done, save to stumble on that foggy night into a meeting of crooks who were no doubt in the act of dividing their spoils prior to distributing them to the “fences?” Of course they took me to be a “squealer” or a police informer. For that reason Lisely, whom I had believed to be my friend, had made that diabolical suggestion of destroying my sight. Yet, in my powerless position, she had surely administered to me some strange insidious injection, and allowed my sight to remain normal.

Why?

The effect of that injection had been to make me unconscious of what I did, of what I said, or even of my life and surroundings, for two whole years. Had other persons been served the same? I had read in the newspapers of many cases of complete loss of memory, which had greatly puzzled medical men, sometimes restored by sudden shock, and I wondered whether my own case was on a par with others. Had others fallen into the hands of that desperate gang, and been subjected to the fatal hypodermic needle as I had been?

Late that afternoon I wandered through the gardens of my old home accompanied by the governor, who took great interest in his exquisite cherries grown under glass. Politics and committees occupied his whole life, but his recreation was a delight in horticulture, and especially in the rearing of flowers.

Every day in the year old Blake, our head gardener, sent him a basket of flowers for his rooms in London, and, more often than not, he appeared in the House wearing a rare orchid grown at Hipwell.

In the fading afterglow we dined together and, in my honor, he opened a bottle of one of his choicest vintages.

Then, when he had wished me every luck, and had given me many words of advice which I highly valued, I took my leave, and just before eleven o’clock alighted again at King’s Cross and drove back to Sackville Street.

CHAPTER TWELVE. MISSING

Through two years my enemies had successfully fooled me. I had no doubt been as clay in their hands, even to the extent that some adventuress had actually married me!

Was the marriage legal? How could I escape from the hateful bondage?

Had I not been warned by the mysterious Illona? Mysterious truly, for not even her address was known to me; hence I could not communicate with her.

The mystery of it all was driving me out of my mind. That accursed drug that Lisely injected into my veins had changed me entirely, sweeping from me all recollection of the present, but allowing me all the horror of the past.

I had awakened to a new sense of life, but after all, when I quietly considered everything while I smoked interminable cigarettes alone, I realized that I was not entirely myself. Moreover, I was appalled at the great responsibility resting on me as the official courier of His Majesty’s Principal Secretary for Foreign Affairs. Why I had accepted such a position was amazing. I was fond of travel, for I had been up and down Europe with my father in every vacation from the ’Varsity. During each recess, the governor always went abroad in search of information to use in the House, which he often did with much damning effect.

Illona! Who was she? Where was she? I was frantic to see her, and obtain from her further facts concerning the serious plot against me. But how?

Next day I took Joan out to lunch at Ciro’s and afterwards we went to a matinée. Tea at the Carlton followed. Therefore, it was not before half-past six that I arrived back at Sackville Street.

“The blind man called again this afternoon, sir,” my man Bruce informed me as I passed into the sitting-room.

“The blind man!” I echoed. “What did you tell him?”

“That you were still away, sir. But he seemed to know that you had returned.”

“He knows, eh?”

“Well, sir, he seemed to know. For he only grinned and said, ‘Your master will be in to meet me next time I call. Please tell him that from me.’ His manner was quite insulting, sir.”

“You showed him out, of course?”

“No, sir, I sent him down in the elevator and allowed him to tap himself out. I told him frankly that if he could find his way up here, he could just as easily find his way out again.”

“Excellent, Bruce,” I said approvingly. “But when he calls next time, say I’m out and let me know instantly. I’ll follow him, and see if he’s blind, or not.”

“Oh, I’m sure he’s as blind as a bat,” my man declared.

“He may be only pretending,” I suggested. “But describe him to me as minutely as you can.”

“Well, sir, he’s a youngish man, dressed always in a shabby grey suit, a soft collar, and an old, frayed black tie. He has a rather sharp-pointed nose and thickish lips.”

The description was rather vague, but was it possible that the man who had posed to me as a romantic lover was the blind man against whom my unknown wife had so seriously warned me?

The thought gripped me, for I saw myself surrounded by secret enemies who—perhaps realizing that, as I had returned to my senses, I was a peril to them—were determined to close my lips.

I concealed my agitation from Bruce and went to my room to dress for the evening. I had promised to go out with Teddy Day, an old college chum who now held a dry-as-dust post in the Treasury—an inspector or something or other. He wore horn-rimmed glasses and had a room of his own—a sure sign of a do-nothing job. Our great Government offices are full of civil servants who are, alas! too often uncivil if you ask about their particular job. They are all the deep growths of officialdom which even inter-departmental committees cannot uproot. In one case, for example, an old friend of mine was an inspector of the purchase department of the Admiralty for naval wireless installations. He knew no more of radio than the merest schoolboy, cared less, and was passing accounts amounting to hundreds of thousands of pounds yearly. Such are some of the drones which Whitehall still hives even in these days of the post-war “axe.”

Teddy Day was a cheery, round-faced man-about-town, essentially a ladies’ man, and a confirmed bachelor. With his hostesses he was a favorite, for he was an excellent dancer, and always fell into a vacancy, as some men appear born to do. We dined at the Piccadilly, and, after coffee at the Travellers’, went on to a dance-club, where we glided over the floor with partners hardly known to us.

Not until half past one in the morning did I get back home, and then I was so tired that I undressed hastily, and soon fell asleep.

Suddenly I heard my telephone bell ring, and I sprang up to find it was already morning.

“Hulloa?” I asked in response to the call.

“Is that you, Lionel?” asked a voice which I instantly recognized as that of Joan’s father. “Is Joan with you?”

“Joan! No. I haven’t seen her since last evening,” I replied.

“But she went out to meet you at eight o’clock for dinner,” said the deep-voiced King’s Counsel.

“She never met me. I had no appointment with her.”

“But you sent a messenger with an appointment. I was here when it came!”

“I sent no messenger, Mr. Gell,” I declared. “I went out with a college friend, and got back about half past one.”

“What! Do you mean to say that you’ve not seen Joan?” he asked.

“I swear that I have not seen her, or sent her any message since I left her at six o’clock last night,” was my astonished reply.

“Then what the devil can have happened to her?” asked her father.

I dressed hastily, and took a taxi to Queen’s Gate, to find both Mrs. Gell and her husband in a state of frantic anxiety.

The statement of Hughes, the lady’s maid, was to the effect that, at about half past seven on the previous evening a telegraph-boy arrived with a note for Miss Joan.

On receiving it she dressed hurriedly, remarking to the maid that she had to meet me, and later went off in a taxi, saying:

“Tell mother I’m out with Lionel.”

From that moment she had not been seen. Her father came in from a dinner of the Fishmongers’ Company in the City, at a quarter to two in the morning. But she had not returned.

Thinking she was at a night club with me, he went to bed, leaving the door on the latch. But, finding at early morning she had not returned, he had made the inquiry over the ’phone, and surely not without reason. It was perplexing, mystifying. What could it mean?

The knowledge that some desperate plot had been formed against me by certain unknown enemies, made it quite apparent that the conspiracy extended to my well-beloved. I said but little to Mr. Gell, but I became all the more convinced that she had fallen innocently into hostile hands, as the message to her, of course, was a false one. The express messenger had delivered to Joan a written note. She knew my handwriting. Who, therefore, had forged my message?

The unknown Illona had warned me not without reason. What could she possibly know?

“We’ll wait till noon, and if we hear nothing, we’ll go down and see Cunningham Lee, the Assistant Commissioner at Scotland Yard,” said the King’s Counsel, whose work at the Old Bailey brought him into intimate touch with the head of the police.

Three anxious hours passed, but the telephone did not ring, nor was there any explanatory message from the girl I so dearly loved. She was lost to me as to her friends. There had been some devil’s work somewhere! When I recalled my own experience in the hands of that desperate gang, I trembled for her. And yet, her only offense, apparently, had been her great love for me.

I longed to find Illona and demand the truth from her. What could she know? Could she tell me something to give a clue to Joan’s sudden disappearance? Or was it due to the fierce jealousy of the woman I had unconsciously wedded?

Very probably it was due to the latter! If so, then my efforts to learn the truth, and to rescue Joan, must be unavailing.

Joan’s mother, naturally, was in tears.

“My girl would never of her own will remain away all night!” she cried. “An accident may have happened, John,” she said to her husband. “Inquiry must be made at all the hospitals.”

The maid was called, and described the dress, coat, and hat which Joan had put on before going out.

“She had two one-pound Treasury notes in her bag as well as some silver, madam,” the girl said. “Miss Joan always carries them in her little purse in case of emergency.”

“Did she seem surprised when you gave her the letter?” asked Mr. Gell, assuming his habitual manner of cross-examination.

“Well, just a trifle, I think, sir.”

“What causes you to say a trifle? Explain it.”

“Well,” replied the neatly-dressed maid, rather confused at her master’s hard, legal glance, “when she opened and read the letter, she exclaimed, ‘Oh, how strange—how very interesting! I must go at once. Mr. Hipwell is waiting for me.’ ”

“She did not say where?”

“No, sir. She bustled me about to get out her dress and shoes, and while she put on her hat I went out to call a taxi.”

“You were at the door when she went out?”

“Yes, sir. I heard her tell the man to drive to Wardour Street, but I could not catch the number.”

“She might have gone to the Cosmo Club. That is in Wardour Street. We are both members,” I remarked.

“Then the rendezvous might have been at the club,” remarked Mr. Gell, who, turning to the maid, asked: