William Le Queux (continued 4)

“Who is he?”

“A gentleman. He was in the Navy on the China station, I think. He’s a most amusing companion, full of droll anecdotes, and seems to know everybody. Dad says that he’s one of the most popular men about London. He has a splendid steam yacht and once or twice he has taken us for cruises. It was in port here for a week at the beginning of the year.”

“Where does he live?”

“In Half Moon Street in London.”

“Has he a country place?”

“I never heard of it.”

Then she was unaware, I saw, that he lived on the Cornish border. Her father, of course, knew the truth, and kept it concealed from her. The fact that he came there to hide for months at a time, and that he travelled about in a steam yacht were sufficient to show that he was one of the clever and ingenious band who had, during the past ten years, effected certain coups so gigantic that they had startled Europe.

“When I met him how long had he been staying with you at the Manor?”

“Only one day. He came on the previous morning, and he left an hour after you did. He wished to consult my father about something—some securities he contemplates purchasing, I think.”

“Was Ella acquainted with him?”

“No. Ella never saw him. He was upstairs in his room, you remember, when we brought her home, and she left in the morning before he was up.”

“You don’t think that it was he who met her in the park after she left me?” I suggested.

She looked at me strangely, as though endeavouring to read my innermost thoughts.

“No, I hardly think that. Why should he, of all men, attack a woman who was a perfect stranger to him?”

“But was Ella a perfect stranger?” I queried. “How do you know that?”

“Of course we can’t say so. He might have met her somewhere else before,” the dark-eyed girl was forced to admit.

“Do not the circumstances all point to the fact that she fled, fearing to face him?” I said.

“Well, it certainly is a theory—but a very strange one,” she answered, her eyes fixed thoughtfully away to the distant horizon. “But what you have told me is so extraordinary. Ella is engaged to be married in a month. To whom? You have not told me that.”

I was silent for a moment, wondering whether I should tell her. So complete were the confidences now between us that I saw I need conceal nothing from her. We entertained a mutual sympathy for each other—I broken and despairing, and she a woman with the mark of fate upon her countenance.

“She is to marry Gordon-Wright,” I said in a low, hard voice.

“Gordon-Wright!” she gasped, drawing back and staring at me open-mouthed. “Ella to marry that man! Impossible!”

“The fellow is compelling her to become his wife. He holds her in his power by some mysterious bond which she fears to break. She is in terror of him. Ella—my own Ella—is that man’s victim.”

“But—but you mustn’t allow this, Mr Leaf!” she cried quickly, and from the anxious expression in her countenance I saw that my announcement had struck her a-heap in amazement. “Ella must never marry him!” she added. “But are you sure of this—are you quite sure?”

“She had admitted it to me with her own lips.”

“Then she must be warned—she cannot know.”

“Know what?”

“Know the facts that are known to me. She is in ignorance, or she would never consent to become that man’s wife!”

“She has been entrapped. She admitted as much.” My companion made no answer. Her brows were knit in thought. What I had revealed to her was both unexpected and puzzling. She evidently knew Gordon-Wright’s true character, though it was hardly likely she would admit it to me.

Yet I wondered, as I had lately very often wondered, whether she were actually in ignorance of her father’s true profession.

“If she has been entrapped, Mr Leaf,” she said slowly, “then she must find a way in which to extricate herself. We must never allow her to become that man’s wife.”

“He is your father’s friend, and yet you hold him in little esteem?” I remarked.

“What I know is my own affair,” was her hard response. “It is sufficient for us to say that Ella is yours, and must be yours.”

“Ah! yes,” I sighed in despair, “if only she could be. Yet I fear that it is impossible. This fellow for some mysterious reason holds her future in his hands. She refuses to reveal anything to me, except that to break away from him is impossible. Indeed, the real reason of her flying visit to you at Studland was to consult him. She knew he was visiting there, and slipped away from her father in order to call upon you.”

“But we had no idea that they were acquainted,” Lucie declared.

“After she had gone to bed your father and Gordon-Wright remained up, talking, she crept back downstairs, I believe, and overheard their conversation.”

“She did!” she gasped, her cheeks going pale. “She heard what they said! Are you quite sure of this?”

“Yes.”

“Then—then she really came to spy upon Gordon-Wright—to spy upon us indeed!”

“Not with any sinister motive,” I hastened to assure her. “She is evidently endeavouring to discover something concerning this man who holds her so utterly powerless in his hands. It is but natural, is it not? It is only what you or I would do in similar circumstances.”

My companion’s face had changed. She was pale and anxious, eager to learn all that I had ascertained.

“She told you this—how she had overheard my father talking to him?”

“No, Gordon-Wright himself charged her with eaves-dropping—and she admitted it.”

“Ah! Then if this be true, Mr Leaf, she had better marry him.”

“Marry him!” I cried. “Why?”

“Because I have a suspicion that she knows something concerning my father. What it is sorely puzzles me.”

“I—I don’t quite understand you,” I said.

“Well—I thought I had spoken plainly enough,” she answered. “You have told me that she admitted to him that she overheard his conversation with my father.”

“Well, and what if she did?” I asked. “Was the consultation between your father and his friend of such a secret nature?”

She hesitated a moment, then lifting her eyes to mine, said:—

“I believe it was.”

“You believe,” I echoed. “You must know, if you are prepared to sacrifice Ella to that man!”

“He probably is in possession of some secret of hers,” she remarked slowly.

“And she on her part, it appears, is in possession of some secret of his.”

“And of my father’s.”

“What is it she knows?” I asked. “Come, give me some hint of it,” I urged. “A moment ago you were my friend, prepared to assist poor Ella to escape—yet now you declare that they must marry.”

“Yes,” was her hard response. “I did not know that she had acted the spy in my father’s house—that she was in love with Gordon-Wright and had come to see him while he was under our roof.”

“She’s not in love with him,” I protested. “She denies it. Unfortunately she is his victim.”

“She deceived you once, remember. Why do you still trust her?”

“Her deception was one for self-sacrifice—to save her father.”

“And my refusal to assist you in saving her from Gordon-Wright is from the same motive.”

“To save your father?”

“How do I know? I tell you I am puzzled.”

“Then the secret is perhaps a guilty one?” I said seriously.

“She must marry this man,” was all her response.

“And this from you, Miss Miller—you, who have always posed as her friend!” I exclaimed reproachfully, for her change of manner had utterly confounded me. I had relied upon her as my friend.

“I am certainly not her enemy,” she hastened to assert. “To see her the wife of Gordon-Wright is my very last desire. Yet it is unfortunately imperative for—” and she stopped short, without concluding her sentence.

“For what?”

“For—well—for my peace of mind,” she said, though I was sure that she had intended saying something else.

“You have already told me that this fellow is unfitted to be her husband,” I exclaimed. “Surely you, her oldest friend, will never allow her to commit this fatal error—to wreck her own happiness and mine, without lifting a finger to save her. Need I repeat to you what I told you at the riverside at Studland, with what a fierce passion I adore her, how that she is mine—my very life?”

“I know,” my companion said, in a voice slightly more sympathetic. “I admit that she ought to marry you—that she is yours in heart. Yet in her secret engagement to Gordon-Wright there is a mystery which makes me suspicious.”

“Suspicious of what?”

She sighed, and moving forward rested her hands upon the balcony, gazing again towards the fiery sunset.

“Well—to put it plainly—that she is deceiving both of us.”

“Deceiving us! In what way?”

“Ah! that is what we have not yet discovered,” replied the girl. “Think of her ingenuity in coming to our house in order to see that man in secret, of how cleverly she made us believe that they were strangers—of her listening to my father’s words when he spoke with Gordon-Wright! All this proves to me that she is working with some mysterious end.”

“She has been endeavouring to effect her emancipation from that scoundrel,” I protested hotly. “She has been trying to break away from him, but in vain. Her motive, Miss Miller, is not an evil one as regards either your father or yourself, you may rest assured. She only desires freedom—freedom to live and to love, the freedom that you, if you will, can assist her to obtain.”

“I—” she cried. “How can I?”

“You know who this fellow Gordon-Wright really is. If you will, you can save her.”

“I can’t. That’s just where the difficulty lies.”

“Then if you will not, I will!” I cried, angry at her sudden withdrawal after all the sympathy I had shown her, and goaded by thoughts of my love’s martyrdom. “Fortunately I happen to know that Gordon-Wright alias Lieutenant Shacklock is wanted by the police of half a dozen different countries, as well as certain of his associates, and a word from me will effect his arrest.” She started, and her face went ashen pale. She saw that I knew the truth, and in an instant held me in dread.

“You—” she gasped. “You would do this—you?”

Chapter Twenty Seven.

From a Woman’s Lips.

The handsome, dark-haired girl had placed her hand upon my arm, and stood with her eyes anxiously fixed upon mine.

“Do you really mean this?” she asked, in a hoarse, strained voice.

“I have told you quite frankly my intention,” was my answer. “I know that scoundrel—in fact I am myself a witness against Him.”

“In what manner?” she asked naïvely.

“That man is one of a clever gang of thieves who for years have eluded the police,” I replied. “In England he lives in security in a Cornish village under the name of Gordon-Wright, while here, on the Continent, he frequents the best hotels, and with his friends makes enormous hauls of money and jewels.”

“A thief!” she exclaimed, with amazement that I thought well feigned. “And can you really actually prove this?”

“The coward robbed a friend of mine who, being ill, could not take care of himself,” I said. “I have only to say one single word to the nearest police office and they will arrest him wherever he may be. And now, to speak quite openly, I tell you that I mean to do this.”

“You will have him arrested?”

“Yes, and by so doing I shall at least save Ella. The thing is really very simple after all. I intend to defy him. Ella is mine and he shall not snatch her from me.”

“Then you know him—I mean you knew him before I introduced you?” she asked, after a brief pause.

“I know him rather too well,” I answered meaningly. “It is curious, Miss Miller,” I added, “that your father should be the intimate friend of a man of such bad reputation. He surely cannot be aware of his true character.”

She knit her brows again, for she saw that she was treading on dangerous ground. She was not an adventuress herself but a sweet and charming girl, yet I had no doubt but that she participated in her father’s many guilty secrets. Perhaps it was her easy-going cosmopolitan air that suggested this, or perhaps it may have been owing to her earnest desire that Ella should marry that man, and thus be prevented from betraying what she had learnt on that fateful night at Studland.

“Dear old dad always makes friends far too easily,” was her evasive reply, the response of a clever woman. “I’ve told him so lots of times. Travelling so much as he does, half over Europe, he is for ever making new acquaintances, and queer ones they are, too, sometimes, I can tell you. We’ve had visitors here, in this flat, of all grades, from broken-down English jockeys and music hall artists trying to borrow their fare third-class back to England, to lords, earls, Stock Exchange men and company promoters whose names are as household words in the halfpenny papers. Yet I suppose it’s so with many men. They are big-hearted, make friends easily, and everybody takes advantage of their hospitality. It is so with my father. All his friends impose on him without exception.”

“Well, it’s a pity that he’s intimate with the man I knew as Lieutenant Shacklock, for when he is in the hands of the police some curious revelations will be made—revelations that will reveal the existence of a most ingenious and daring Continental gang. You see,” I added, with a smile, “I’m not making a mere idle statement—I know. These men once robbed a friend of mine, and it is only just to him that, having discovered Shacklock, I should give information against him.”

“You mean you will win Ella by freeing her of that man?” said my companion, apparently following me for the first time.

“Exactly. If he holds any secret of hers, he is quite welcome to speak. Neither I nor Ella will fear anything, you may depend upon that. A man of his stamp always seeks some low-down revenge. It is only what may be expected. Perhaps I may as well tell you that I recognised him when you introduced us, and that I have already been down to Cornwall and seen the smug scoundrel at his home. He’s a church-warden, a parish councillor and all the rest of it, and the people believe he’s worth thousands. He poses as a philanthropist in a mild way, opens local bazaars, and makes speeches in support of the local habitation of the Primrose League. All this is to me most amusing. The fellow little dreams that he sits upon the edge of a volcano that to-morrow may engulf him—as it certainly must.”

“But is this worth while—to denounce such a man? You’ll be compelled to support your allegations,” she said.

“Oh! I can do that, never fear,” I laughed. “I shall bring his victim forward—the man he robbed so heartlessly. English juries have no compassion for the swell-mobsman or the elegant hotel-thief.”

I watched her face as I spoke, and saw the effect my words were having upon her. If I denounced him her own father would at once be implicated. Hers were alarming apprehensions, no doubt.

I saw that I was gradually gaining the whip-hand over circumstance. She recognised now that her father was in deadly peril of exposure.

And yet did she know the truth, after all? If she actually knew that the young Chilian Carrera, the man she loved when they lived outside Paris, had met with his death through her own father’s treachery, she surely would not hold him in such esteem.

Yet was it likely that such skilled scoundrels as the mysterious Miller, Milner—or whatever he chose to call himself—and Gordon-Wright alias Lieutenant Harold Shacklock would risk exposure by betraying their true occupation to a sweet high-minded girl such as Lucie really was? Had she been their decoy; had there, indeed, been any suspicion that she had assisted them in their clever conspiracies of fraud then it would have been different.

There was, however, no suspicion except that she had spoken of her father’s “secret,” which she feared that Ella had learned when she overheard her father’s conversation with his friend. That was a curious and unaccountable feature. She knew that her father held some secret that was shared by Gordon-Wright, that gallant ladies’-man who had wormed himself into the confidence of so many English and American women travelling on Continental railways, women whose jewels and valuables had subsequently disappeared.

She, however, held her father in the highest regard and esteem, and that fact in itself was sufficient to convince me that she was after all in ignorance of his true profession.

She might have entertained suspicions of the lieutenant, suspicions that were verified by the denunciation I had just made, but as I looked into her pale dark face I could not bring myself to believe that she knew her father’s true source of income. There was some secret of her fathers, a secret that she knew must be kept at any cost. It was that which she feared Ella might betray, and for that reason she deemed it best that my love should be allowed to become the false lieutenant’s wife.

Thus I argued within myself as I stood there beside her with the blood-red light of the dying day streaming in from across the sea.

I recollected Sammy’s warning; I recollected, too, the strange circumstances of Nardini’s death in Shepherd’s Bush, and of what had been told me by this woman now at my side. She was doomed, she said—and, true enough, there was black despair written in that dark face, now so pale and agitated.

She was as much a mystery as she had been on that first day when we had met—even though through her instrumentality the mystery of my well-beloved’s self-effacement had actually been cleared up.

That she detested the lieutenant had been palpable from the first mention I had made of him. Therefore I argued that she suspected him of playing her father false, even though she might be unaware of their real relationship. Indeed it was not natural for a father of Miller’s stamp to allow his daughter to know of his shameful calling. She had told me that she remained at home with old Marietta—the grey-haired Tuscan woman who had admitted me—while her father travelled hither and thither across Europe. Those unscrupulous “birds of prey,” known to the police as international thieves, migrate in flocks, travelling swiftly from one frontier to another and ever eluding the vigilance of the agents in search of them. The international thief is a veritable artist in crime, the cleverest and most audacious scoundrel of the whole criminal fraternity.

“I quite understand your feelings and all that you must suffer, Mr Leaf,” she said at last in a mechanical voice. “I know how deeply you love Ella, and, after all that has passed, it is not in the least surprising that you will not stand by and see her married to such a man as Gordon-Wright. Yet is it really prudent to act without carefully considering every point? That she is about to become that man’s wife shows that she is in his power—that he possesses some mysterious hold over her. And suppose you denounced him to the police, would he not, on his part, revenge himself upon her?”

“Probably. But I will risk that.”

“Personally I think that Ella will be the greater sufferer from such an injudicious action.”

Curious. Her words bore out exactly what Ella herself had said. Yet she surely could know nothing of the secret between them. Until half an hour ago, when I had told her, she was not even aware that Gordon-Wright was acquainted with the woman who had been betrothed to me.

“But I do not intend that she shall fall the victim of this adventurer,” I said quickly, for I recognised in her words a fear that her father’s secret might be exposed.

“If he really possesses a hold over her sufficient to compel her to marry him, any attempt to rescue her may only cause her complete ruin,” she said. “Have you any idea of the nature of this extraordinary influence he seems to have over her?”

“None. I am in entire ignorance.”

“When we met that night at Studland I certainly was deceived,” she went on. “I believed that she was beside herself with delight at finding you again, and still unmarried—I never dreamed that she was engaged to another—and to Gordon-Wright of all men.”

“Why do you say ‘of all men’?”

“Because—well, because he’s the last man a girl of her stamp should marry.”

“Then you know more about him than you care to admit, Miss Miller?”

“We need not discuss him,” was her brief answer. “It is Ella we have to think of, not of him.”

“Yes,” I said, “we have to think of her—to extricate her from the horrible fate that threatens her—marriage to a scoundrel.” Then turning again to my pretty companion I said, in a voice intended to be more confidential: “Now, Miss Miller, your position and mine are, after all, very curious. Though we have been acquainted so short a time, yet the fact of your having been Ella’s most intimate friend has cemented our own friendship to an extraordinary degree. We have exchanged confidences as old friends, and I have told you the secrets of my heart. Yet you, on your part, have not been exactly open with me. You are still concealing from me certain facts which, if you would but reveal, would, I know, assist me in releasing Ella from her bondage. Why do you not speak plainly? I have travelled here, across Europe, to beg of you to tell me the truth,” I added, looking straight into her pale serious face.

“How can I tell you the truth when I am ignorant of it myself?” she protested.

“What I have told you this evening concerning Ella’s engagement to that blackguard has surprised you, and it has also shown you that the mysterious secret of your father’s of which you have spoken may be imperilled, eh?”

She nodded. Then, after some hesitation, she said:—“Not only that, but something further. That Gordon-Wright should aspire to Ella’s hand is utterly mystifying.”

“Why?”

“Well—you recollect what I told you regarding—regarding that man who died in the house where you were living in London,” she said, in a low, faltering voice.

“You mean the ex-Minister of Justice, Nardini?”

She nodded an affirmative.

“I remember perfectly all that you told me. He refused to speak the truth concerning you.”

“He laughed in my face when I asked him to make a confession that would save me,” she said hoarsely, her dark eyes flashing with a dangerous fire. “He was a coward; he sacrificed me, a woman, because he feared to speak the truth. Ah!” she cried, clenching her hands, “you see me here wearing a mask of calm and tranquillity, but within my heart is a volcano of bitterness, of scorn for that wretched embezzler who carried his secret to the grave.”

“I can quite understand it, and fully sympathise with you,” I said, in a kindly tone, recollecting all that had passed between us after she had discovered the mysterious Italian dead in that upstairs room at Shepherd’s Bush. “But I hope you are not still disturbed over what may, after all, be merely an ungrounded fear?”

“Ungrounded!” she cried. “Ah! would to Heaven it were ungrounded. No. The knowledge that the blow must fall upon me sooner or later—to-day, to-morrow, in six months’ time, or in six years—holds me ever breathless in terror. Each morning when I wake I know not whether I shall again return to my bed, or whether my next sleep will be within the grave.”

“No, no,” I protested, “don’t speak like this. It isn’t natural.” But I saw how desperate she had now become.

“I intend to cheat them out of their revenge,” she said, in a low whisper, the red glow of the sundown falling full upon her haggard face. “They shall never triumph over me in life. With my corpse they may do as they think proper.”

“They? Who are they?”

“Shall I tell you?” she cried, her starting eyes fixing themselves upon mine. “That man Gordon-Wright is one of them.”

“He is your enemy?” I gasped.

“One of my bitterest. He believes I am in ignorance, but fortunately I discovered his intention. I told Nardini, and yet he refused to speak. He knew the peril in which I existed, and yet, coward that he was, he only laughed in my face. He fled from Rome. I followed him to England only to discover that, alas! he was dead—that he had preserved his silence.”

“It was a blackguardly thing,” I declared. “And this fellow, Gordon-Wright, or whatever he calls himself, though your father’s friend, is at the same time your worst enemy?”

“That is unfortunately so, even though it may appear strange. To me he is always most charming, indeed no man could be more gallant and polite, but I know what is lurking behind all that pleasant exterior.”

“And yet you are opposed to me going to the police and exposing him?” I said in surprise.

“I am opposed to anything that must, of necessity, reflect upon both Ella and myself,” was her answer. “Remember the lieutenant knows that you and I are acquainted. I introduced him to you. If you denounced him as a thief he would at once conclude that you and I had conspired to effect his ruin and imprisonment.”

“Well—and if he did?”

“If he did, my own ruin would only be hastened,” she said. “Ah! Mr Leaf, you have no idea of the strange circumstances which conspired to place me in the critical position in which I to-day find myself. Though young in years and with an outward appearance of brightness, I have lived a veritable lifetime of woe and despair,” she went on, in a voice broken by emotion.

“In those happy days at Enghien I loved—in those sweetest days of all my life I believed that happiness was to be mine always. Alas! it was so short-lived that now, when I recall it, it only seems like some pleasant dream. My poor Manuel died and I was left alone with a heritage of woe that gradually became a greater burden as time went on, and I was drawn into the net that was so cleverly spread for me—because I was young, because I was, I suppose, good-looking, because I was inexperienced in the wickedness of the world. Ah! when I think of it all, when I think how one word from Giovanni Nardini would have liberated me and showed the world that I was what I was, an honest woman, I am seized by a frenzy of hatred against him, as against that man Gordon-Wright—the man who knows the truth and intends to profit by it, even though I sacrifice my own life rather than face their lying denunciation without power to defend myself. Ah! you cannot understand. You can never understand!” and her eyes glowed with a thirst for revenge upon the dead man who had so unscrupulously thrust her back into that peril so deadly that she was hourly prepared to take her own life without compunction and without regret.

“But all this astounds me,” I said, in deep sympathy. “I am your friend, Miss Miller,” I went on, taking her slim hand in mine and holding it as I looked her straight in the face. “This man, Gordon-Wright, is, we find, our mutual enemy. Cannot you explain to me the whole circumstances? Our interests are mutual. Let us unite against this man who holds you, as well as my loved one, in his banal power! Tell me the truth. You have been compromised. How?”

She paused, her hand trembled in mine, and great tears coursed slowly down her white cheeks. She was reflecting whether she dare reveal to me the ghastly truth.

Her thin lips trembled, but at first no word escaped them. Laughter and the sound of gaiety came up from the promenade below.

I stood there in silence in the soft fading light await her confession—confession surely of one of the strangest truths that has ever been told by the lips of any woman.

Chapter Twenty Eight.

The Voice in the Street.

At last she spoke.

But in those moments of reflection her determination had apparently become more fixed than ever.

Either she feared to confess lest she should imperil her father, or else she became seized with a sense of shame that would not allow her to condemn herself.

“No,” she said, in a firm voice, “I have already told you sufficient, Mr Leaf. My private affairs cannot in the least interest you.”

My heart sank within me, for I had hoped that she would reveal to me the truth. I was fighting in the dark an enemy whose true strength I could not gauge. The slightest ray of light would be of enormous advantage to me, yet she steadily withheld it, even though she lived in hourly danger, knowing not when, by force of circumstances, she might be driven to the last desperate step.

She was a woman of strong character, to say the least, although so sweet, graceful and altogether charming.

I was disappointed at her blank refusal, and she saw it.

“If it would assist you to extricate Ella, I would tell you,” she assured me quickly. “But it would not.”

“Any fact to the scoundrel’s detriment is of interest to me,” I declared.

“But you have already said that you yourself are a witness against him,” she remarked. “What more do you want? The evidence which you and your friend whom you say he robbed could give would be sufficient to send him to prison, would it not?”

“I know. But I must prove more. Remember he has entrapped my Ella. She is struggling helplessly in the web which he has woven about her.”

“Much as I regret all the circumstances, Mr Leaf, I can see that it is against my own interests if I say anything further,” was her calm reply. “I have already given you an outline of the strange combination of circumstances and the unscrupulousness of two villains which has resulted in my present terrible position of doubt in the present and uncertainty of the future. The story, if I related it, would sound too strange to you to be the truth. And yet it only illustrates the evil that men do, even in these prosaic modern days.”

“Then you intend to again leave me in ignorance, even though my love’s happiness is at stake?”

“My own life is also at stake.”

“And yet you refuse to allow me to assist you—you decline to tell me the truth by which I could confound this man who is your bitterest enemy!”

“Because it is all hopeless,” was her answer. “Had Nardini but spoken, I could have defied him. His refusal has sealed my doom,” she added, in a voice of blank despair.

“But your words are so mysterious I can’t understand them!” I declared, filled with chagrin at her refusal to make any statement. She was in fear of me, that was evident. Why, I could not for the life of me discern.

“I have merely told you the brief facts. The details you would find far more puzzling.”

“Then to speak frankly, although you have never openly quarrelled with the lieutenant, you fear him?”

“That is so. He can denounce me—I mean he can make a terrible charge against me which I am unable to refute,” she admitted breathlessly.

“And yet you will not allow me to help you! You disagree with my plan to denounce the scoundrel and let him take his well-deserved punishment! I must say I really can’t understand you,” I declared.

“Perhaps not to-day. But some day you will discern the reason why I decline to confess to you the whole truth,” was her firm reply.

And I looked at her slim tragic figure in silence and in wonder.

What was the end to be? Was she aware that her father was the leader of that association of well-dressed thieves, or was she in ignorance of it? That was a question I could not yet decide.

I thought of Ella—my own Ella. It was she whom I had determined to save. That was my duty; a duty to perform before all others, and in defiance of all else. She loved me. She had admitted that. Therefore I would leave no stone unturned on her behalf, no matter how it might affect the stubbornly silent girl at my side.

I saw that I could not serve them both. Ella was my chief thought. She should, in future, be my only thought.

“I much regret all this,” I said to Lucie somewhat coldly. “And pardon me for saying so, but I think that if you had spoken frankly this evening much of the trouble in the future would be saved. But as you are determined to say nothing, I am simply compelled to act as I think best in Ella’s interests.”

“Act just as you will, Mr Leaf,” was her rather defiant response. “I trust, however, you will do nothing rash nor injudicious—nothing that may injure her, instead of benefit her. As for myself, to hope to assist me is utterly out of the question. The die is cast. Nardini intended that disgrace and death should fall upon me, or he would have surely spoken,” and sighing hopelessly she added: “I have only to await the end, and pray that it will not be long in coming. This suspense I cannot bear much longer, looking as I daily do into the open grave which, on the morrow, may be mine. Heaven knows the tortures I endure, the bitter regrets, the mad hatred, the wistful longing for life and happiness, those two things that never now can be mine. Place yourself in my position, and try and imagine that whatever may be your life, there is but one sudden and shameful end—suicide.”

“You look upon things in far too morbid a light,” I declared, not, however, without some sympathy. ”There is a bright lining to every cloud’ the old adage says. Try and look forward to that.”

She shook her head despairingly.

“No,” she answered, with a short bitter laugh. “Proverbs are for the prosperous—not for the condemned.”

I remained with her for some time longer, trying in vain to induce her to reveal the truth. In her stubborn refusal I recognised her determination to conceal some fact concerning her father, yet whether she knew the real truth or not I was certainly unable to determine.

The revelation that Ella was acquainted with Gordon-Wright alias the Lieutenant held her utterly confounded. She seemed to discern in it an increased peril for herself, and yet she would tell me nothing—absolutely nothing.

The situation was tantalising—nay maddening. I intended to save my well-beloved at all costs, yet how was I to do so?

To denounce the adventurer would, she had herself declared, only bring ruin upon her. Therefore my hands were tied and the cowardly blackguard must triumph.

The soft Italian twilight fell, and the street lamps along the broad promenade below were everywhere springing up, while to the right the high stone lighthouse, that beacon to the mariner in the Mediterranean, shot its long streams of white light far across the darkening sea.

From one of the open-air café-chantants in the vicinity came up the sound of light music and the trill of a female voice singing a French chansonette, for a rehearsal was in progress. And again a youth passing chanted gaily one of those stornelli d’amore which is heard everywhere in fair Tuscany, in the olive groves, in the vineyards, in the streets, in the barracks, that ancient half dirge, half-plaintive song, the same that has been sung for ages and ages by the youths in love:—

Mazzo di fiori! Si vede il viso, e non si vede il core Tu se’ un bel viso, ma non m’innamori.

Lucie heard the words and smiled.

The song just described my position at that moment. I saw her face but could not see her heart. She was beautiful, but not my love.

And as the voice died away we heard the words:—

Fiume di Lete! Come la calamita mi tirate, E mi fate venir dove velete.

Old Marietta, the Tuscan sewing-woman, entered and lit the gas. She looked askance at me, wondering why I remained there so long I expect.

“It is growing late,” I exclaimed in Italian; “I must go. It is your dinner-hour,” and glancing round the room, carpetless, as all Italian rooms are in summer, I saw that it was cheaply furnished with that inartistic taste which told me at once that neither she nor her father had chosen it. It struck me that they had bought the furniture just as it had stood from some Italian, perhaps the previous occupier.

Old Marietta was a pleasant, grey-faced old woman in cheap black who wore large gold rings in her ears and spoke with the pleasant accent of Siena, and who, I saw, was devoted to her young mistress.

“This is Mr Leaf,” she explained in Italian. “He is an English friend of my father’s.” Then turning to me she said, laughing, “Marietta always likes to know who’s who. All Italians are so very inquisitive about the friends of their padrone.”

The old woman smiled, showing her yellow teeth and wished me buona sera, to which I replied in her own tongue, for the position of servants in Italy is far different from their position with us. Your Tuscan house-woman is part of the family, and after a few years of faithful service is taken into the family council, consulted upon everything, controls expenditure, makes bargains, and is, to her padrone, quite indispensable. Old Marietta was a typical donna di casa, one of those faithful patient women with a sharp tongue to all the young men who so continuously ran after the young padrona, and only civil to me because I was a friend of the “signore.”

She was shrewd enough to continue to be present at our leave-taking, though it was doubtful whether she knew English sufficiently to understand what passed between us. I saw that Marietta intended I should go, therefore I wished her young padrona adieu.

She held her breath for a moment as our hands clasped, and I saw in her brown eyes a look of blank despair.

“Be courageous,” I said, in a low voice. “The future may not hold for you such terrors as you believe.”

“Future!” she echoed. “I have no future. Addio.” And I went down the wide, ill-lit stone staircase full of dismal foreboding, and out from the secret lair of the thief who was notorious, but whom the police of Europe had always failed to arrest.

Chapter Twenty Nine.

Contains Another Surprise.

I dined at a small table alone in the big crowded table-d’hôte room of the hotel. About me were some of the most exclusive set in Italy, well-dressed men and women, Roman princes, marquises and counts, with a fair sprinkling of the Hebrew fraternity. At the table next mine sat a young prince of great wealth together with the fair American girl to whom he was engaged to be married, and the young lady’s mother. The prince and his fiancée were speaking Italian, and the old lady from Idaho City, understanding no other language but her own, seemed to be having anything but an amusing time.

All this, however, interested me but little. I was reflecting upon the events of that afternoon, trying to devise some means by which to solve the enigma that was now driving me to desperation.

My well-beloved was in a deadly peril. How could I save her?

I saw that rapid and decided action was necessary. Should I return to England and watch the actions of the man I had known as Lieutenant Shacklock, or should I go on to Rome and try and discover something both regarding the object of Miller’s journey there and the part of the Italian who, prior to his death, had consigned to me that mysterious packet?

As I ate my dinner in silence I decided to first take a flying visit to Rome. I could return to England afterwards. Ella’s marriage was not for three weeks or so, therefore I might, in that time, succeed in solving the enigma as far as Miller was concerned, and by doing so obtain further information against his accomplice, Gordon-Wright.

Therefore at midnight I left Leghorn by way of Colle Salvetti, and through the night travelled across the Maremma fever-marshes, until at nine o’clock next morning the train drew into the great echoing terminus of the “Eternal City.”

I went to the Hotel Milano, where it was my habit to stay. I knew Rome well and preferred the Milano—which, as you know, is opposite the Chamber of Deputies in the Piazza Colonna—to the Grand, the Quirinale, or the new Regina. At the Milano there was an unpretentious old-world comfort appreciated too by the Italian deputies themselves, for many of them had their pied-à-terre there while attending to their parliamentary duties in the capital.

Rome lay throbbing beneath the August heat and half deserted, for every one who can get away in those breathless blazing days when the fever is prevalent does so. Numbers of the shops in the Corso and the Via Vittorio were closed, the big doors and persiennes of the palaces and embassies were shut, showing that their occupants were away at the sea, or in the mountains, in France, Switzerland or England for cool air, while the cafés were deserted, and the only foreigners in the streets a few perspiring German and American sightseers.

Unfortunately I had not inquired of Lucie her father’s address and knew nothing except that he was staying with a doctor named Gavazzi. Therefore at the hotel I obtained the directory and very soon discovered that there was a doctor named Gennaro Gavazzi living in the Via del Tritone, that long straight thoroughfare of shops that run from the Piazza S. Claudio to the Piazza Barberini.

It was about midday when I found the house indicated by the directory, a large palazzo which in Italian style was let out in flats, the ground floor being occupied by shops, while at the entrance an old white-haired hall-porter was dozing in a chair.

I awoke him and inquired in Italian if the Signore Dottore Gavazzi lived there.

“Si signore. Terzo piano,” was the old fellow’s reply, raising his forefinger to his cap.

“Thank you,” I said, slipping five francs into his ready palm. “But by the way,” I added as an afterthought, “do you know whether he has an English signore staying with him—a tall dark-haired thin man?”

“There’s a gentleman staying with the Signore Dottore, but I do not think he is an Englishman. He spoke perfect Italian to me yesterday.”

“Ah, of course, I forgot. He speaks Italian perfectly,” I said. “And this Dottore Gavazzi. How long has he lived here?”

“A little over a year. He acted as one of the private secretaries to His Excellency the Minister Nardini—he who ran away from Rome a little time ago, and hasn’t since been heard of.”

“Oh! was he,” I exclaimed at once, highly interested. “Nardini played a sharp game, didn’t he?”

“Embezzled over a million francs, they say,” remarked the porter. “But whenever he came here, and it was often, he always gave me something to get a cigar with. He was very generous with the people’s money, I will say that for him,” and the old fellow laughed. “They say there was a lady in the case, and that’s why he fled from Rome.”

“A lady! Who was she?”

“Nobody seems to know. There’s all sorts of reports about, of course. I hope the police will find him. They must arrest him some day, don’t you think so, signore?”

“Perhaps,” I said, thinking deeply. “But I’m interested to hear about the lady. What is it you’ve heard?”

“Only very little. According to the rumour, the police found at the Villa Verde, out at Tivoli, after he had gone, the dead body of a young lady locked in the study. It was at once hushed up, and not a word of it has been allowed to get into the papers. The Government gave orders to the police, I suppose, to suppress it, fearing to make the scandal graver. I heard it, however, on very good authority from my son who is in the carabinieri and stationed at Tivoli. The body, he says, was that of a well-dressed young lady about twenty-six or seven. When the carabineers went with the commissario to seal up the fugitive’s effects, they found the body lying full length on the carpet. She still had her hat on and seemed as though she had suddenly fallen dead. Another curious thing is that the doctors discovered no wound, and don’t seem to know what was the cause of her death.”

“That’s strange!” I remarked. “I suppose they photographed the body?”

“Of course. But the portrait hasn’t been published because the police are compelled to hush up the affair.”

“Does your son know any further particulars, I wonder?”

“No more than what he’s told me. He says that quite a number of secret police agents have been over to Tivoli trying to establish the lady’s identity, and that they think they know who she was. He was here only yesterday and we were talking about it.”

“And who do they think she was?”

“Well, my son has, of course, a lot to do with the police, and a few days ago a friend of his of the squadra mobile told him that they had established the fact that the dead girl was English.”

“English! Do they know her name?”

“No, only they say that she was in Rome a great deal last winter, and was seen generally in the company of a tall, dark, English girl, her friend. Indeed, they say that both of them were seen in the Corso, accompanied by a middle-aged English gentleman, about a week before Nardini took to flight. They had apparently returned to Rome.”

“And they know none of their names?”

“They’ve found out that the English signore stayed at the Grand, they don’t know where the young ladies were living, probably at some small pension. They are now doing all they can to find out, but it is difficult, as most of the pensions are closed just now. They’ve, however, discovered the name of the dead girl’s friend—through some dressmaker, I think. It was Mille—Milla—or some name like that. The English names are always so puzzling.”

“Miller!” I gasped, staring at the old fellow, as all that Lucie had admitted to me regarding her visit to the villa at Tivoli flashed through my bewildered brain. “And she was the intimate friend of this unknown girl who has been found dead in the empty house and whose tragic end has been officially hushed up!”

Chapter Thirty.

Some Discoveries in Rome.

The mysterious flight of Nardini, the prominent politician and Minister for Justice, was, it seemed, still the one topic of conversation in the “Eternal City”, Only that morning I had read a paragraph in the Tribuna that the fugitive was believed to have reached Buenos Ayres. The Embassy in London had evidently kept the secret I had divulged, and even the Italian police were in ignorance that the man wanted for that gigantic embezzlement—for the sum stated to have disappeared was now known to be a very large one—was already in his grave.

The mysterious discovery at the dead man’s villa out at Tivoli, that pleasant little town with the wonderful cascade twenty miles outside Rome, greatly complicated the problem. And the girl who had been found in such strange circumstances was actually an intimate friend of Lucie Miller! The whole thing was assuming a shape entirely beyond my comprehension.

I presently thanked the old porter for his information, slipped another tip into his hand, and walked back to the Corso, hugging the shade, and reflecting deeply upon what the old fellow had told me.

Two or three facts were quite plain. The first was that Miller would most certainly not be in Rome if he had the slightest suspicion that the police were in search of Lucie. Therefore, although the doctor had acted as the fugitive’s secretary, he was in ignorance of the discovery made at the Villa Verde. Again, had not Nardini himself for some reason abstracted from the archives of the Questura the official record of Miller, his description and the suspicions against him?

Therefore I saw that the police were hampered in their inquiries, because they were without information. Again, the name of Gennaro Gavazzi, though not an uncommon one in Italy, struck me as familiar from the first moment that Lucie had uttered it in Leghorn.

Now, as I walked the streets of Rome, I remembered. It came upon me like a flash. It had been written in that confidential police record that the doctor was a Milanese, and that he was suspected of being an accomplice of the Englishman.

And yet Nardini, being aware of this, had actually appointed him one of his private secretaries!

That latter fact was one that showed either conspiracy or that Nardini, crafty and far-seeing, employed the doctor with some ulterior motive.

I was anxious to see what sort of person this Gavazzi might be.

I begrudged every moment I spent in Rome, anxious as I was to be back near my well-beloved and shield her from the blackguard who held her in his power. Yet this new development of the mystery held me anxious and eager.

Already I was in possession of greater knowledge of the affair than the police themselves; therefore I hoped that I might, by careful action and watching, learn the truth.

Somehow, by instinct it might have been, I felt that if I could but elucidate the mystery of the Villa Verde I should gain some knowledge that would release my love from her hideous bondage. I don’t know why, but it became a fixed idea with me. Therefore I resolved to remain in Rome at least a few days and carefully watch Miller and his friend.

Every moment, every hour, I thought of my sweet one who I knew loved me as passionately as I loved her, and yet who was now separated from me by a gulf which I was determined to bridge. She was ever in my thoughts, her beautiful face with those dear sad eyes ever before me, the music of her voice ever ringing in my ears. Yes. She should be mine—mine if I died myself in order to save her!

Towards evening I loitered up and down the Via del Tritone hoping to catch sight of the doctor and his English visitor, for I calculated that their probable habit was to dine at a restaurant. From the porter I had learnt that Gavazzi was a bachelor, therefore he probably had arrangements en pension at one or other of the restaurants, in the manner of most single men in Rome.

Though I waited nearly two hours, from half-past six to half-past eight, I saw nothing of Miller or of his host. The old porter noticed me, therefore having gauged his character pretty accurately I crossed to him and explained that I was waiting to see the doctor come out, as I was not certain whether he was the Dr Gavazzi whom I had known in Venice some years ago. This little fiction, combined with another small tip, satisfied the old man, and I went forth into the street again, fearing that if I remained in the entrance Miller, in passing, might recognise me.

It was a weary vigil, and one that required constant attention, for on a summer’s evening the streets of Rome are crowded by the populace who come out to enjoy the cool air after the blazing heat of the day. Another hour passed without sign of them. In any case they must have dined in their rooms—perhaps sent a servant out to a neighbouring cook-shop.

Therefore I went round to the Piccolo Borsa, the small restaurant in the Via della Mercede, at which I always ate when in Rome, and there snatched a hasty meal.

Shortly before ten I returned to my vigil and learnt from my friend the porter that the doctor was still in casa. Therefore I idled in patience, glancing from time to time up at the windows of the apartment in question. There were lights there, but the green persiennes were still closed, as they had been all day.

As the night wore on the street became extra full of idling promenaders, for it was festa and all Rome was out to gossip, to lounge and to obtain a breath of the bel fresco. Men were crying the evening newspaper in loud strident tones, and here and there walked the police in couples, with their epaulettes and festa plumes. Before every café the chairs overflowed into the roadway, and every table was occupied by men and women, mostly in white cotton clothes, sipping sirops. Rome is cosmopolitan only in winter. Rome is the Roman’s Rome in summer, bright, merry and light-hearted by night; silent and lethargic by day—a city indicative of the Italian temperament and the Italian character.

I was just about to relinquish my watch, believing that the doctor and his English friend did not intend to come forth that evening, when I suddenly saw Miller in a white linen suit and straw hat emerge from the big doorway into the street, accompanied by a short, black-bearded, dark-faced Italian of about thirty-five, who also wore a straw hat, fashionably-cut suit of dark cloth, and a drab cotton waistcoat across which was a thick gold albert.

They turned towards the Piazza Colonna, and I at once followed, keeping them well in sight. The doctor appeared to be something of a dandy, for he carried yellow gloves, notwithstanding the oppressive heat, and the crook of his walking-stick was silver gilt. He wore a red cravat, a high collar, and his jacket was cut narrow at the waist with ample skirts, slit up at the back, and turned-over cuffs.

He was a typical Roman elegant, but his face had craft and cunning plainly written upon it. Those dark searching eyes were set too closely together, and although there was a careless, easy-going expression upon his countenance I could see that it was only feigned.

What, I wondered, was the urgent business which had brought Mr Miller post-haste from England?

Deep in conversation they passed up the Corso for a little distance, then turning at the Puspoli Palace they traversed the small streets leading to the Tiber until they reached the Via di Repetta, up which they continued until they suddenly turned into a narrow, ill-lit, dirty street to the right and disappeared into an uninviting wine-shop, one of those low little drinking-houses which abound in the poorer quarters of Rome.

That it was a low neighbourhood I could see at a glance. I had never explored that part of the “Eternal City” before, and had not had time to notice the name of the street.

A few moments after the two men had disappeared I sauntered past and glanced inside. The ceiling was low, and blackened by the lamp suspended in the centre. Upon shelves around were many rush-covered flasks of wine, while at the end was a pewter counter where a coarse tousled-haired woman was standing washing glasses.

At the table three forbidding-looking men, with their felt hats drawn over their eyes, were drinking and throwing dice, shouting excitedly at each throw, while one man rather better dressed was sitting apart writing a letter, with a long cigar between his lips.

There was, however, no sign of the doctor and his companion who, it seemed, had passed straight into the room beyond. It was hardly the place in which one would have expected to find the owner of that Dorsetshire manor, and I now saw the reason why the doctor had, ever and anon, looked round as though in suspicion that they might be followed.

They had an important appointment there, without a doubt. And, moreover, they were no strangers to the place.

I would have given worlds to have been able to get a peep behind that closed door.

I was, however, forced to remain idling up and down the street, watched and commented upon by the groups of women gossiping at their doors, and scowled at by the men who seemed to lurk smoking in the shadows. They recognised by my clothes and my walk that I was a forestiero, a stranger, and wondered probably whether I was not an agent of police.

After half an hour Miller and his friend came out, accompanied by a young girl, hatless, as is the mode among the people, and with a bright yellow scarf twisted around her neck. She was about seventeen, good-looking, wore big gold ear-rings and showed an even set of white teeth as she spoke to Miller and laughed.

Together they set off along the Lugo Tevere, crossed the Ponte S. Angelo, and plunged into that labyrinth of narrow dirty streets that lay between the river and St. Peter’s. Presently, in a dark street off the Borgo Pia, the girl left them, and halting they stood talking together after lighting cigarettes.

The girl hurried on and was lost in the darkness, yet they were evidently awaiting her return.

My own position was a difficult one, for I feared that at any moment Gavazzi’s quick eyes might detect me and point me out to Miller who would recognise me. For fully a quarter of an hour the pair remained there, until at last the girl returned, bringing with her a young man about twenty-two, a low-born swaggering young fellow who wore his soft grey hat askew, and walked with his hands in his pockets, a man of distinctly criminal type who had probably never done an honest day’s work in his life. By the light of the street lamp I saw that he bore across his cheek an ugly cicatrice from an old knife-wound, and that upon his chin was a mole upon which the hair was allowed to grow. The latter was significant—it was the mark of that powerful secret society of criminals, the Camorra.

The girl, who was probably his inamorata, introduced them, whereupon he lifted his hat with his finger and thumb and swung it back upon his head with a twist—an action by which one Camorrist betrays his allegiance to the initiated.

For a few moments they conversed together, then the girl, wishing the trio buona sera, sped away, and passing me was again lost in the darkness, while the men, walking together slowly, came on in my direction. The doctor was conversing with the young man in low whispers, and it seemed to me that he was giving him certain instructions. But I could not, of course, approach sufficiently near to overhear what was said. Miller was listening, but said nothing, except when addressed by his friend.

Outside the massive Castel S. Angelo there is a cab-rank, and all three entered a closed cab.

That there was some dark conspiracy in progress I could not doubt. The presence of that young swaggerer—a man capable of committing any crime I could see—was distinctly suspicious. Besides they dare not be seen with him; therefore they took a closed cab, the only one upon the rank on that hot night.

They moved off across the bridge, and when they were a hundred yards away I got into one of the open cabs and told the driver to follow, for I was determined at all hazards to ascertain what cunning scheme was in progress.

Fortunately, on account of my linen suit being dirty, I had exchanged it for one of dark blue serge, therefore I was not so conspicuous in the darkness as was Miller. To my surprise they drove direct to the railway station, where they alighted and the doctor went to take tickets. Noticing this, I told my driver to jump down and overhear their destination, promising him five francs for the information.

In a moment he was gone, while I minded his horse.

Five minutes later he returned, saying:—

“The Signore has taken three second-class tickets to Tivoli.”

Tivoli! What, I wondered, was their object in going out to Tivoli at that hour?

I watched them pass the barrier on to the platform; then I myself took a ticket for the same destination, passed through, and entered an empty compartment of the waiting train. I saw, however, that while Miller and his friend were in a second-class carriage, the young man in the grey felt hat was in a third-class compartment. They were evidently taking precautions not to be seen in his company.

I was sorely tempted to slip across to the police office and ask the delegato to allow a detective to accompany me. Yet if I did this I should only be giving Miller into the hands of the police, and thus quite ruin all my chances of discovering the truth. No. If I wished to find out what was in progress I was, I saw, compelled to continue fearless and alone.

Something desperate was in progress, otherwise they would never have sought the services of that young Camorrist. Miller was far too gentlemanly a rascal to associate with common criminals.

The train was a slow omnibus one, and it was past midnight before we drew into the station of Tivoli. I held back, allowing all three to alight before me, and saw that, on the platform, they separated and passed out singly, as though unacquainted. A detective was idling at the barrier as is always the case in Italy, but their appearance did not attract him and they took the dark road leading towards the ancient town which in the daytime commands such beautiful views of Rome and the Campagna, the town that has always been a popular summer resort even since the Augustan age when Maecenas, Hadrian and the Emperor Augustus himself had their villas there, and gave their marvellous fêtes.

As I followed the trio, who still walked separately, I could hear the quiet of the night was broken by the thunder of the giant waterfalls, for me a fortunate circumstance, as the sounds of my footsteps were deadened. In Miller a strange transformation had been effected. He had been conspicuous in his suit of white, yet now he was in dark clothes. He had adopted the trick often practised by malefactors of wearing one suit over the other, so as to be able to enter a place wearing a light suit and gay-coloured scarf, and leave it three minutes afterwards dressed entirely differently. He had simply slipped off his white cotton suit while in the train and had either thrown it out of the window, or left it beneath the seat of the railway-carriage.

Railway searchers and platelayers, even in England, find complete suits of clothes more often than one would imagine.

From the station at Tivoli the road to the town, part of the ancient Valeria, runs down to the St. Angelo Gate. There it branches out in two ways, one entering the town across a high bridge, and the other continuing up the hill and out into the country.

The three men took this latter road, a winding tortuous one which led up past an ancient castle and away to the heights behind. There were no lights, but the night was not exactly dark, and I could distinctly see the white road before me and the figures moving forward. One had gone on rapidly in front, while the other two also walked separately as though strangers.

Suddenly I saw the figure nearest me leave the road and pass into a vineyard. Then a few minutes later, as I went on, I lost sight of the other two and at the same time found that we had reached a splendid old cinquecento villa, an enormous place the back of which abutted on to the road. Its great square windows were closely barred as they had been in those old turbulent days when every house had been a fortress, and from the great entrance gate with its crumbling stone lions on either side ran a long dark cypress avenue. The ponderous gate was covered with sheet iron so that I could see only the tops of the trees within.

This was, I supposed, the Villa Verde, the country-house of the man who had died unrecognised in the boarding-house in Shepherd’s Bush.

There was no door leading to the roadway save the great entrance gate. Through that Miller and his companions had certainly not passed, therefore I concluded that they had reached the house by a secret way through the vineyard.

Careful to remain always in the shadow, and moving with greatest caution, I retraced my steps, entered the vineyard at the point where I had seen one figure disappear, and after a few moments discovered a narrow path through the trailing richly laden vines which led through an open gate to a small side door in a wing of the great old building.

I tried it. The handle yielded. They had passed through there, without a doubt!

Should I enter there? Was I not perhaps risking my life in so doing? They were a desperate trio. I knew well my fate, if they discovered that I had learned their secret.

I held my breath. Then with sudden resolve, I slowly pushed the door open and peered eagerly within.

Next instant I drew back aghast.

What I saw there staggered me. I was not prepared for it.

I could distinctly hear my own heart beating within me.

Chapter Thirty One.

The Secret of the Villa Verde.

The unexpected sight that met my eyes within that narrow stone passage was truly horrifying.

An oil lamp shed a faint light at the farther end of the narrow tunnel-like place, and revealed the body of a man lying in a heap in such a position that I saw, in an instant, that some tragedy had occurred.

Creeping forward I bent beside him and touched his hand. It was still warm, yet I saw across the stones a large dark pool—a pool of blood, and at the same moment discovered that it issued from an ugly knife-wound just over the heart.

He was a respectably dressed man of forty, robust, heavily built, with dark moustache and shaven chin. As I touched his hand, which lay helpless at his side, my fingers came into contact with something hard, and I found that strapped around his waist he carried a revolver.

Quickly I took it out, for I had no weapon myself, and at a glance saw that it was the regulation pattern as supplied to the agents of police.

The man who had been stabbed to the heart so unerringly was probably a detective who had been left in charge of the villa after the police had taken possession of the place. Hearing a summons at the door he had perhaps gone to open it, when the ready knife had struck him down, and the desperate trio had passed over his body and entered the villa to prosecute their mysterious object.

I listened. There was no sound. The intruders, whatever their object, were in the main building; for it seemed that this narrow passage merely gave entrance to the servants’ quarters. The place was an enormous, rambling one, built, as I afterwards found, by Prince Torlonia in the days of the Borgia Pope, once full of splendour and magnificence, but sadly neglected and degenerated in these modern days.

Again I examined the prostrate man, placing my hand upon his heart but failing to detect any movement. He was dead without a doubt.

Noiselessly I crept forward, my ears strained to catch every sound, my hand gripping the dead man’s revolver. If I were discovered I could now, at least, make a fight for life. The fearless way in which they had struck down the detective was sufficient to show me that they would hesitate at nothing.

Those were exciting moments, for at the end of the narrow stone passage I passed through a door, and found myself in a great dark chamber which seemed to be unfurnished. The faint grey light that struggled in through the barred windows was sufficient to allow me to see that it opened into a great square hall, around which was set a number of ancient high-backed chairs of the same epoch as the house itself. The rooms were lined with ancient tapestries falling to decay, and there was everywhere a damp mouldy smell as though that wing of the place had long been closed and uninhabited.

Passing along another corridor, I opened a door at the farther end and found myself at once in the modernised portion of the place, in a corridor where, upon the thick dark red carpet, my feet fell noiselessly, and where a candle which the intruders had probably lit was set upon a table.

Again I listened. I fancied I caught the sound of voices, but was not quite certain.

For some moments I remained there, holding my breath in hesitation. To search for them in that great place was full of danger and difficulty. And yet, having gone so far, I was determined that I would ascertain their object in coming there.

At last, reassuring myself that the voices I had heard were only sounds in my imagination, I went forward again through an open door into a fine long picture-gallery, well carpeted as was the corridor. At the end showed another faint light, for the men had, I now saw, lit a child’s night-light which they had probably brought with them.

In that portion of the house there was evidence of wealth and luxury everywhere. Nardini had probably spent a good deal of the public money upon embellishing that fine old place with its wonderful sculptured fireplaces and frescoed and gilt ceilings.

Still scarcely daring to breathe lest my presence be detected, I went forward again, until of a sudden voices, plain and unmistakable, broke upon my ear, causing me to halt suddenly and stand motionless as a statue.

They were in some room in the vicinity. But where? It was quite dark where I stood, but from a door slightly open at some distance before me shone a thin streak of faint light, evidently from a candle.

Dare I approach and peep within?

At first I hesitated, for the risk was very great, but at last summoning courage I moved across the thick carpet to the open door and peered in.

It was a great salon, I found, a huge, high-roofed place with old gilt furniture upholstered in red silk brocade and some marvellous buhl cabinets full of rare china and bric-à-brac. The place was in darkness, save for the single night-light placed upon a chair—the intruders fearing, of course, to ignite the lamps as the light would shine outside and perhaps attract attention.

The great salon led into an inner room, and in there I saw their moving figures by the light of two candles that had been put upon the carpet. They were conversing only in low whispers and seemed to be groping about the floor in the farther corner of the room, as though in search of something.

I slipped into the big salon, and creeping from table to chair, bending double so as to be concealed the whole time, I managed to approach near the door of the inner room, and took up a position where I could both observe their movements and overhear their words.

Now that I reflect upon my actions of that night, I see how utterly reckless of life I was. A single slip, a cough, a sneeze, and I should be lost. And yet, holding my breath, I knelt behind that big gilt armchair wherein the princes of the cinquecento had once sat, and watched those men at their mysterious work.

The heavy red plush curtains had been drawn across the long windows, and I recognised that the apartment was a library or study, for there were big cases filled with old parchment-covered volumes, and set before one of the windows was a big carved writing-table. As I watched, the doctor lit the gas-lamp upon it, removing the green silk shade so as to give a better light in the room, and as he did so the young man in the grey hat, who had thrown off his coat and was on his hands and knees on the floor, suddenly picked up something which he handed to Miller, saying in Italian with a grin:—“This looks a little suspicious, does it not, signore?” Miller took the object in his hand, and started. Then I saw that it was a narrow gold bangle—a woman’s bracelet. He took it to the light, and read some words inscribed in the inside. Then he stood in silence and wonder.

“What’s the matter?” inquired Gavazzi, in broken English. “What is it?”

His friend handed it to him without a word.

But the doctor only shrugged his shoulders, smiled, and handed back the bangle.

At that moment the truth flashed across my mind—the truth unknown to those men. In that room—if that were Nardini’s study—the mysterious discovery had been made. The body of an unknown young Englishwoman had been found there.

Was that bangle her property? Miller had certainly recognised the inscription upon it, and knew its owner.

I saw that he stood there with knit brows, still glancing at the bracelet, as though mystified.

“Come,” urged Gavazzi, in the brisk businesslike way which appeared to be natural to him. “We have no time to lose if we really intend to be successful.” And he went down upon his knees in the farther corner of the room, carefully feeling the surface of the blue velvet-pile carpet with his hands.

“We’d better have it up,” he declared at last. “I feel sure it’s somewhere in this corner.”

“Then you never actually saw it?” remarked Miller, a trifle disappointed.

“No. But it isn’t likely he would ever reveal to me where he kept his most private secrets. We were friends, intimate friends, but Giovanni Nardini was not the man to reveal to even his own father what he considered was a secret. See this!” And rising he walked to the oak-panelled wainscotting, touched a spring, and there was revealed a small secret door leading down to a short flight of steps in the wall somewhere into the cellars below—a secret mode of egress.

Again he went to a book-case, part of which proved false, and there on pulling it away revealed a large iron safe let into the wall.

“You see I am aware of some of his secrets. The police think they’ve searched the place, but they’ve never discovered either of these, that’s very certain,” he laughed.

Then, with the younger man, he proceeded to tear up the carpet, showing that the floor, unlike that in most Italian houses, was boarded and not of mosaic.

All three moved the furniture and gradually rolled the carpet back until they had half-uncovered the room. It was heavy, exciting work, and the perspiration rolled from their brows in great beads.

Once the chair behind which I was concealed moved a little and the wheel squeaked.

Miller’s quick ear caught the sound.

“Hark!” he cried, starting up. “What’s that?”

“A mouse,” exclaimed the doctor, laughing. “I heard it. Don’t worry yourself, my dear James, we are safe enough now with that guard out of the way.”

By the aid of the candles they examined every floorboard, trying each to see if it were movable. But they were all fast, and gave no sign of covering any place of concealment. They seemed to be in search of some cavity where something they believed was concealed.

With their knuckles they tapped all over the floor, but the sound emitted was exactly the same everywhere.

For a full hour they searched until suddenly the doctor, who had been indefatigable, while running his hand along the floor close to the oak wainscoting quite near the writing-table, made a discovery which instantly brought his companions upon their knees at his side.

“Look!” he cried. “See! There is a little piece of a different wood let in here—round like a large wooden stud! I wonder what it is?” He pressed it with his fingers, but to no avail. Therefore he took out his pocket-knife and with the end pressed down hard, throwing all his weight upon his hand. “It gives!” he cried excitedly. “There’s some spring behind it! You are stronger,” he exclaimed, turning to the younger man. “Try. Push down, so!”

Chapter Thirty Two.

The Ticking of the Clock.

The man with the grey hat took the pocket-knife, knelt over the spot, placed the knife in position, and pressed with all his might, when slowly a panel of the oak wainscoting about two feet square fell forward until it lay flat at right angles, disclosing a small locked door behind.

“This is it, no doubt!” cried the doctor, tugging at the door. It yielded, disclosing a secret cupboard.

A clock set upon a cabinet on the side of the room near where I was hidden was ticking. I had not noticed that sound before, and I thought it strange.

Miller held the candle while the others peered within. They all had their backs turned to me, and in my eagerness I bent forward in order to obtain a better view of what was concealed there.

“See!” cried Gavazzi. “I was not mistaken! I knew he had some secret hiding-place here. In this room he spent days, sometimes with me, but more often locked in here alone. Fortunately for us, the police know nothing of this.”

“Yes,” exclaimed Miller. “Let us see what his treasures are. I wonder what he would say if he saw us handling his secrets,” he added, with a short dry laugh. “The papers to-day say that he’s been seen in Bahia.”

Evidently Lucie had for some reason kept her knowledge of the fugitive’s death from her father.

“He was always methodical,” remarked the Italian. “And he seems to have carried out his methods here. Look at all these pigeon-holes! Made by himself, it seems, from their roughness. He dared not call in a carpenter. But he was of a very mechanical turn of mind, and probably constructed the whole thing himself.”

“It certainly would escape observation,” remarked the young man, examining the thick old panel of polished oak that had fallen back.

The doctor had drawn from one of the pigeon-holes a bundle of official-looking papers folded and secured with tape. He glanced at them with critical eye and cast them aside as being without interest. Another, and another, he drew out, but none of them attracted his attention for more than a few moments.

“They are merely secret information collected against various politicians and personages—information that he thought might one day be useful,” said Gavazzi.

“And profitable, eh?” added Miller, with a laugh.

“Quite so. We may find it equally profitable to us one day,” remarked his companion. “They will prove interesting reading when we have time to go through them.”

They were evidently in search of something else. Surely they had not deliberately sacrificed a man’s life to obtain those few dusty papers? What, I wondered, was contained in that precious packet which the owner of that villa had given me before his death?

Two large matrices of official seals Miller drew out and examined.

“Ah! yes!” exclaimed Gavazzi, “I suspected he had those. They are copies of the seal of the Ministry, and with them he fabricated quite a number of official documents. By means of those he sent an order to the convict prison at Volteria to release Rastelli, the forger, who was a friend of his. The Governor at once set him at liberty, and does not know to this day that the order was a forgery. Indeed, I believe that, for a consideration, he used to give out these orders.”

“And he made them himself!” Miller laughed. “A pretty profitable business!” And he turned over the brass seals in his hand, while the little clock ticked on.

“Of course. If he had only been satisfied and not attempted too much, he would have remained years in office without any suspicion falling upon him. I, however, knew something of what was in progress, and yet he defied me and absolutely refused to let me share. Well—you know the rest,” he laughed. “I didn’t see why he should take all the profits and I do the work.”

“But you managed to be pretty well paid,” his friend remarked.

“I merely looked after myself. Yet, if Giovanni had not been a fool and taken me into the affair when he knew that I’d discovered everything, we might have run the Ministry as a joint concern until—well, until the next Cabinet crisis or King Umberto dismissed us. It’s a pity—a thousand pities—he was such a fool. But you see he got unnerved, he was afraid of his enemies, and so he acknowledged his peculations by bolting.”

“A fatal mistake,” Miller declared. “I wonder he didn’t get across to Greece. The police couldn’t have touched him there. He knew the law of extradition quite as well as you or I. To go to South America is simply running into the arms of the police.”

“I question whether he is in America,” the doctor said, examining deliberately the contents of another of the pigeon-holes. “The report may have been circulated by the police themselves—as reports so often are—to put the fugitive off his guard. No, I should think that he is more likely in Paris, or Vienna, or Berlin. He could reach either capital by the through train from Rome. He probably put on a suit of workman’s clothes and travelled third-class with a stick and a bundle. That’s the safest way to get out of the country—don’t you think so? We’ve both done it more than once,” he laughed.

There was something distinctly humorous to me in the owner of the Manor at Studland travelling as an Italian labourer among the unwashed third-class passengers and passing the guards at the frontier with his worldly belongings tied up in a dirty handkerchief.

And yet that is a course very often adopted by the international thief as the safest way in which to pass from one country to another.

“Gran Dio!” ejaculated Gavazzi a moment later, as he held a small packet open in his hand. “Money! Look!”

Both men bent eagerly, and I saw that the doctor held in his hand a thick packet of yellow bank-notes secured by an elastic band—thousand-franc notes they were, and there could not be less than fifty of them.

“What good fortune!” cried Miller. “It was worth doing after all.”

“I told you it was. This was his secret bank. Probably there’s more inside.”

In an instant the three men tore out the contents of the pigeon-holes and scattered them upon the floor in their eagerness to secure what the dead man had hidden there.

“Here’s another lot!” exclaimed the young man, holding up a second packet, while a few minutes later Miller himself discovered two fat packets, each note for one thousand francs. A fourth packet was discovered containing English twenty-pound notes and some German paper money.

Those were exciting moments. The men scrambled and snatched the packets from each other, tearing them open in their fierce eagerness to ascertain whether they contained notes. In the eyes of all three was that terrible lust for gold that impels men to great crimes, that fierce passion that renders men unconscious of their actions.

Time after time smaller packets were discovered, which they thrust into their pockets uncounted.

There was wealth there—wealth that would place all three of them beyond the necessity of those subterfuges by which they had previously lived—an ill-gotten hoard of bank-notes which I calculated to be of the value of many thousands of English pounds sterling.

And I was witness of their unexpected good fortune, for which the poor unfortunate man in charge had been foully done to death.

Miller suddenly discovered a large packet of thousand-franc notes in the back of the cupboard and pocketed them—a packet double the size of the first—whereupon a fierce quarrel instantly ensued.

Both the doctor and the young man declared that the money should be properly divided, while Miller flatly refused.

Hot words arose—quick accusations and recriminations, the men raising their voices all unconsciously, when of a sudden something entirely unexpected occurred.

The men were silent in an instant—silent in awe.

The clock, hitherto unnoticed by them, had stopped ticking.

Chapter Thirty Three.

Certain Persons are Inquisitive.

The half-open door through which I had been watching the men’s mysterious movements, and the discovery of the fugitive’s hidden wealth, suddenly closed of its own accord, with the heavy clang of iron.

Besides startling me, it left me in semi-darkness in the great salon.

I heard them rush frantically towards it, trying to open it, but their efforts were unavailing. Loud imprecations escaped them, for they believed that some person had imprisoned them. If they succeeded in escaping they would certainly discover me, therefore my position was one of extreme peril.

But I recollected the strange ticking of that clock which had commenced when the secret cupboard had been opened. The ticking had now ceased, therefore the door had closed automatically upon the intruders. By some clever contrivance Nardini had connected his secret hiding-place with the door that had been strengthened and lined with steel, enamelled white to match the wood-work of the salon. By a clockwork arrangement the door would evidently close upon the inquisitive person who opened the cupboard at a certain time afterwards.

When the little clock standing upon the pearl-inlaid cabinet had suddenly broken the silence by ticking it had attracted my attention, but I quickly forgot it in watching the trio so narrowly. The study window was evidently strongly barred, as were all the windows of the ground floor of the villa, the bars being built into the wall outside the house in such a manner that they could only be filed through, an operation which would take considerable time even with proper tools.

They hammered upon the door and threw their weight upon it, but it did not budge. Evidently by the same mechanical contrivance several strong steel bolts had been shot into their sockets.

The trio at the very moment of their sudden acquisition of Nardini’s dishonestly obtained wealth had been entrapped.

“We’re discovered!” I heard Miller cry in English.

“Whoever has found us has locked us in!”

It never occurred to them that the cupboard and the door were connected, or that Nardini had invented such an ingenious contrivance in order to entrap any thief who might discover his secret.

“We must get out of this as quickly as possible!” Gavazzi exclaimed breathlessly. “Let’s make the division of the money afterwards.”

“The window!” suggested the younger man, but a rapid examination proved it to be too strongly barred.

I heard them within the room consulting with each other as to what could be done, and was amused at their chagrin, having discovered the dead man’s hoard only to be so unexpectedly imprisoned with the wealth upon them.

The two Italians showered fierce imprecations upon whoever had bolted them in, and vowed that the police should never take them alive. They knew, too well, the serious charge they would have to face, for they knew that the body of the detective left in charge would be discovered behind the side door.

A heavy piece of furniture was brought to play upon the study door, but the sound made as they battered with it revealed to them that they were endeavouring to break down iron.

“Hush!” cried Miller suddenly. “We mustn’t make a noise like that. There are probably contadini living in the vicinity, and it will awaken them.”

“Bah!” responded the doctor. “They’ll only believe that it’s a ghost. Here the contadini are most superstitious.”

“But the carabinieri are not,” remarked the young accomplice apprehensively. “My own idea is that we’ve been followed. I noticed a man in a dark suit looking very hard at us when we left the train.”

“What kind of man?” the doctor inquired quickly.

“Looked like an Inglese signore, rather tall, about thirty, and wore a dark suit.”

“Why in the name of Fate didn’t you mention it to us at the time?” cried Miller. “An Inglese! Who could he possibly be? Have you ever seen him before?”

“Never.”

“Then he may have followed us here and alarmed the carabinieri!” gasped the doctor. “We must escape—before they arrest us!”

I saw that the young thief had noticed me when I had followed them out into the darkness from the station at Tivoli. He would therefore recognise me if we met again.

They would, no doubt, make a desperate attempt at escape. Yet should I raise the alarm and call the police? Was it policy on my part to do so? If Lucie’s father were arrested, Lucie herself must surely be implicated, and perhaps through Gordon-Wright my own dear love might also find herself in the criminal’s dock.

The mystery had grown so complicated and so inexplicable that I feared to take any step towards the denunciation of the thieves.

My only policy was to wait and to watch.

I recollected Ella’s appeal to me to remain silent concerning the scoundrel under whose banal thrall she had so mysteriously fallen, and I feared that if I made my statement it might lead to the fellow’s arrest.

What, I wondered, was the true explication of the mystery of the unknown girl being found in that room wherein the three thieves were entrapped? Who was she? What did Lucie know concerning her?

A great fear possessed me that the police, in searching, would discover Lucie in Leghorn, though in Italy the detectives always find more difficulty in tracing foreigners than the Italians themselves. Every Italian, when he moves his habitation even from one street to the other, is compelled to give notice to the police. But not so the large foreign floating population who are for ever moving over the face of what is essentially a tourists’ country.

Another great crash upon the door awakened me to a sense of my peril, should these men succeed in escaping. With as little compunction as they had struck down the guard, they would, I knew, strike me down, and even though I had a revolver they were three to one. Besides, a pistol is no use against a knife in the hands of such an expert as the young thief in the grey hat whom they had so swiftly taken into their confidence.

With regret that they had seized that large amount in money, and yet in the hope that they might regain their liberty and remain for some time longer—at least until I had learned the truth concerning my well-beloved—I crept softly back along the great salon, feeling my way before me with my hands. So thick was the carpet that my feet fell noiselessly, and my escape was rendered all the more easy by the noise the men were making by trying to batter down the door.

Swiftly I retraced my steps along the corridors, through the picture-gallery and the older wing of the great house, until I came to the long dim stone corridor. I shuddered as I passed into it, for there lay still undiscovered, and in the same position in which the assassins had left it, the body of the unfortunate police agent who had been left in charge of the fugitive’s property which had been seized by the Government. On tiptoe I approached it, and bending, replaced the revolver.

Then with a final glance at the evidence of a horrible deed—a deed committed for the lust of gold—I crept out into the early morning air which blew fresh and cool from over the mountains, causing the leaves of the vines to rustle while a loose sun-shutter creaked mournfully as it swung to and fro overhead.

Retracing my steps through the vineyard I gained the high-road, when the fancy took me to ascend to the back of the villa and listen if I could hear the imprisoned intruders.

Hardly had I reached the top of the hill when the truth was revealed to me, as I expected. Their voices could be distinctly heard, for one of those strongly barred windows that looked out upon the roadway was that of the room wherein the absconding ex-Minister had concealed the money he had filched from the public purse.

I halted in the darkness beneath the window, trying to catch the drift of the conversation, and even while I stood there one of them pulled aside the heavy curtains and allowed a stream of light to fall across the roadway. It was surely an injudicious action, yet they could not examine the bars without so doing.

Standing back in the shadow I saw them open the window and feel the strength of that thick prison-like grating, the defence in those turbulent days when the place had been a miniature fortress.

“Without a file, it’s impossible to break them,” declared Gavazzi, in a tone of deep disappointment. “But we must get out somehow. Every moment’s delay places us in graver peril. What shall we do?”

I saw that their position was utterly hopeless. They had been caught like rats in a trap. Therefore I crept along under the old stone wall of the villa and made my way down the hill in the direction of where the electric street lamps of the town of Tivoli were shining.

It was, I saw by my watch, already half-past two.

After walking near half a mile, at a bend in the road two carabineers in uniform, with their guns slung upon their shoulders, emerged suddenly upon me and called me to halt.

Imagine my confusion. I held my breath, and perhaps it was fortunate for me that the darkness hid the pallor of my face.

“Who are you?” demanded one of the rural guards in Italian, with a strong northern accent. He was Piedmontese, I think.