Kitabı oku: «The Mysterious Mr. Miller», sayfa 15

“Born in London and domiciled in Milan, I see,” remarked the carabineer.

“I was living in Milan when I applied to the Public Security Department for the permit.”

“Well,” he said, “it’s lucky for you you had it upon you, otherwise you might have spent a day or two in prison for the untruth you told us.” And he handed back the licence to me with a grim smile. “Perhaps you’ll tell me now where you really have been?”

I saw it necessary to alter my tactics, therefore I answered with a laugh: —

“To tell the truth I came out from Rome last night to keep an appointment – a secret one – with a lady – if you really must know.”

“Then you’d better go back again to Rome,” was his answer, apparently well satisfied, and believing that story more probable. “There’s a train in twenty minutes or so, and we’ll see you into it. We are on our way to the station.”

From that moment we grew friendly, for the carabineers are a splendid body of picked men, and are always polite to the foreigner.

“You were coming down from the villa yonder,” explained the man who had interrogated me half apologetically. “Therefore we had to ascertain who you were.”

“What villa do you mean?”

“The Onorovele Nardini’s. He’s absconded, as I daresay you’ve heard.”

“Ah?” I said, “I did read in the English journals something about it. And did he live up there?”

“Yes. At the big villa. You must have passed it. He used to live here a great deal, and every one believed him to be an honest man.”

“Wasn’t he?”

“Dio no! He got a million francs of the public money, and no one knows what has become of it.” Was either of these men the son of the old concierge in the Via del Tritone, I wondered? I longed to ask them, but dare not. They, of course, told me nothing regarding the mysterious discovery of a woman’s body in the ex-Minister’s study. Perhaps, indeed, they, like all others outside the confidential branch of the police service, were ignorant of it.

“And doesn’t any one know where he is?” I asked, as we strolled at length upon the dark platform of the railway station.

“Oh! He’s in estero somewhere. We shall never get him, you may be sure. When once a man like that gets over the frontier he’s gone for ever.”

What, I wondered, would these two men think when, on the morrow, the truth of what had occurred at the Villa Verde became revealed! The body of the detective would be found, and another mystery would succeed the one which was being so carefully suppressed.

Both men accepted cigarettes from my case as we idled up and down the platform awaiting the train for Rome. It was their duty to meet all the night trains and note all arrivals and departures, therefore we passed an idle half-hour gossiping pleasantly until the train drew up, and entering a first-class compartment I bade them farewell and breathed freely again as we moved off towards the “Eternal City.”

The instant the train was clear of the station I saw my imminent peril. By ill-fortune these guards had met me, they had read my name, seen my description, and knew me well. As soon as the discovery was made in the Villa Verde – indeed, at any moment – they would telegraph those details all over the country and eagerly seek to arrest me as an accomplice. Whether Miller and his friends were arrested or not, they would naturally connect me with the affair. That was but natural.

Fortunately I had succeeded in impressing upon them that I was a respectable person, but I recognised that if I desired to retain my liberty – my liberty to free my love from that mysterious bond which held her to a scoundrel – I must escape from Italy both immediately and secretly.

Before arrival in Rome I took off the gold pince-nez I habitually wore, discarded my collar and cravat, tied my handkerchief around my neck in attempt at disguise, and so passed the barrier. Afterwards I walked some distance, and then took a cab to the hotel.

At eight o’clock, with a ticket for Florence by way of Pisa, I was in the express for the frontier at Modane. I purposely took a ticket for Florence, and then from Pisa, at two o’clock in the afternoon, I took another ticket to Turin. If my departure had been noted, they would search for me in Florence.

That journey was, perhaps, one of the most exciting in all my life. I travelled third-class, attired in an old suit, old boots, and a handkerchief tied about my neck. In Turin I had four hours to wait, as the express to Paris did not convey third-class passengers, and those four hours passed slowly, for being a constant traveller I was known by sight by the waiters in the buffet and many officials. Therefore I was compelled to avoid them. Besides, was I not still in Italy? The police had no doubt already discovered what had occurred at the Villa Verde, and from Rome my description had probably been telegraphed along every line of railway.

Next morning, however, before it was light, I descended from the omnibus-train that had crawled up the Alpine slopes and through the Mont Cenis tunnel, and found myself upon the long dreary platform at the French frontier, Modane.

I had now to face the pair of scrutinising Italian detectives who I knew stood at the door of the Custom House watching every one who leaves the country.

It was a breathless moment. If I passed them without recognition I should be free. If not – well it would mean disaster, terrible and complete, both for me and to the woman I so dearly loved.

I was risking all, for her sake, because she was mine. I was striving to solve the mystery, and to gain knowledge that would place her beyond the reach of that blackguard who held her so irrevocably in his power.

Summoning all my courage I gripped the bundle which contained a few necessaries – for the remainder of my luggage I had sent direct to Charing Cross and posted the receipt for it to my club – and went forward into the Custom House, displaying my belongings to the French douanier.

They had been viséd, I had tied them up again in the big handkerchief, and was passing out.

Another moment and I should be upon French territory.

Suddenly, however, a heavy hand was placed upon my shoulder, and a voice exclaimed in Italian: —

“One moment! Excuse me. I have a word to say to you!”

Turning with a start I faced a short man in a light tweed suit, while behind him stood the two detectives.

My heart sank within me. I knew that the affair at the Villa Verde had been discovered, and that I was lost!

Chapter Thirty Four
Love in Fetters

“Just step in here one moment,” said the man in the grey suit. “I want to ask you a question.” And he conducted me to a small office at the farther end of the platform, the bureau of the Italian police.

“Now who are you?” he asked, fixing me with his keen dark eyes, while the two detectives, who had evidently been expecting my arrival and identified me from the telegraphed description, stood by watching.

“My name is Sampson – Samuel Sampson,” was my prompt reply, for during the whole of the previous day I had gradually concocted a story in readiness for any emergency.

“Oh!” exclaimed the delegato in disbelief. “And what are you?”

“Under-steward on board the Italia of the Anchor Line between Naples and New York. I landed yesterday morning at Leghorn, and am going home on a holiday to London. Why?” I asked, with feigned surprise.

“You left Rome yesterday,” he said, “and your name is Godfrey Leaf,” – he pronounced it “Lif.”

“Oh!” I laughed, “that’s something new. What else? If you doubt me here’s my passport. It’s an English passport with the Italian visé, and I fancy it ought to be good enough for you.”

And I handed him Sammy Sampson’s passport which had been in the writing-book in my suit-case for close upon a year – ever since he and I had taken a short trip to San Sebastian, over the Spanish border.

The police inspector opened the document, glanced at the visa of the Italian Consulate-General in London, and carefully spelt the name of Sampson.

“There is no description or profession,” he remarked dubiously.

“Well,” I said, “I suppose that is not the first English passport you’ve seen, is it? But I don’t think you have ever seen one different, or with fuller detail than that!”

“Then you are not Godfrey ‘Lif’?” he asked, still dubious.

“I’m what I’ve already told you. What do you suspect of me? I’m an Englishman travelling home, I’ve committed no crime or offence against the law, and I don’t see why I should suffer this indignity! But if you desire to be satisfied, you are perfectly at liberty to search me and my belongings.” And I handed him my bundle.

“We’ve already seen it when it was examined in the dogana,” remarked one of the detectives.

My revolver licence, card-case, cigarette-case and other articles that might betray me I had been careful to put in my trunk which was registered through to London. Therefore I had thoroughly assumed my friend’s identity. English passports are so vague and lax that the greatest abuses are often committed with them.

I was quick to notice that my prompt reply to the questions rather nonplussed my interrogator. He took the official telegram from the table, read what it contained very carefully, and then looked long and earnestly at me.

I remained firm and unmoved, well knowing that all my future happiness depended upon my calm indifference. Yet indifference at such a moment was a matter of extreme difficulty.

He began to put other questions to me, in the hope, it appeared, of making me commit myself to a falsehood. But I was now thoroughly on the alert, and gave quick, unhesitating replies.

Had the inspector been an Englishman he would probably have detected by my speech that I was not an under-steward, but being Italian he was thus handicapped. Indeed, so circumstantial an account did I give of getting two months’ leave from my ship to visit my mother in London, and in addition presenting a passport perfectly in order, that just before the train was leaving for France he and his companions, filled with doubt as to whether I was actually the person wanted, allowed me to walk out again upon the platform – a free man!

Five minutes later I had mounted into an empty third-class compartment, but I dare not breathe before the train slowly moved away in the “direction de Paris.”

The terrible anxiety of those moments will surely live with me until my dying day, for I had both love and life at stake; my own love, my well-beloved’s life!

After thirty hours of slow travelling and constant stoppages and shuntings I arrived at the Gare de Lyon, and again resuming the luxury of a collar and cravat I purchased a ready-made suit of blue serge, a hard felt hat and a few necessaries, for no longer I needed the disguise of a workman.

Contrary to my usual custom of going to the Grand, I put up at the Athenée, which is greatly patronised by Americans, and where I had a New York friend staying at that moment. Then, after dinner, I telegraphed to Leghorn to Lucie Miller telling her that I had left Italy, and that if she wished to communicate with me she should write or telegraph. My idea was that if her father had been arrested, as he most probably had been, she would certainly require the assistance of some friend, and might probably prefer me. Of course she would not willingly admit to me her father’s disgrace, yet by her own actions I should be pretty well able to judge what had taken place.

I was eager to be back near Ella, yet before I crossed to England I determined to await a reply to my message to Lucie.

For three days I remained in suspense, idling with my American friend in cafés and restaurants, and showing him Paris in a mild kind of way.

I had searched the French and English newspapers diligently to learn any details of the affair at the Villa Verde, but in vain, until one evening in the reading-room of the hotel I came across a copy of the Corriere della Sera, the journal of Milan, in which was a long telegram from Rome, headed: “The Escape of the Minister Nardini: Mysterious Tragedy at the Villa Verde.”

In breathless eagerness I read how the police, on going in the morning to relieve the guard placed at the villa, found the unfortunate man lying dead with a knife-wound in his heart. Thieves had evidently entered the house by the window of the study which looked out upon the roadway, for the iron bars had been filed through and a space made sufficient to admit a man. Nothing, however, had been taken, as far as could be ascertained. The study was in complete order, and the police theory was that the man in charge, hearing the noise, had entered the room only to be confronted by several men. He then fled across the house intending to get out and raise the alarm, when he was overtaken in the passage and stabbed.

The theory was, of course, quite a natural one.

The thieves had, it seemed, before their escape placed the room in order, closed the secret cupboard, replaced the panel, and put down the carpet as they had found it. The action of reclosing the panel had, of course, released the bolts that held the door, but they had already, by some means or other, cut through the bars. Probably they escaped without knowing that the door had been automatically released.

In any case they were clear away with a sum amounting to many thousands of pounds sterling – probably the greatest haul Miller had made in all his career.

There was, however, a second telegram which stated that two carabineers patrolling the road near the villa had stopped and questioned a mysterious Englishman who was now suspected to be one of the assassins, and after whom the police were in active search.

Miller and his companions were actually scot-free – and with their enormous booty!

No word was published regarding the mysterious discovery previously made in that house. The police were still hushing up the affair that was so shrouded in mystery, yet at the same time they evidently connected the two curious circumstances, and regarded them as a problem altogether beyond solution. Little, however, did they dream that the missing man’s secret hoard had been carried off in its entirety!

Next morning, when the waiter brought my coffee, a telegram lay upon the tray. It was from Lucie, despatched the previous day from the Swiss frontier at Chiasso, announcing that she and her father were on their way to Paris and would arrive that night at the Hôtel de Grand, which proved to be a modest little place in the Rue de la Michodière, near the Boulevard des Italiens.

Miller was escaping with those thick packets of thousand-franc notes which I had seen him secure, though Lucie was, of course, in entire ignorance of what had occurred.

Next morning I anxiously sought her. She came to me in the little salon of the unpretending hotel, a neat figure in her blue serge travelling-dress and smart little toque. Greeting me enthusiastically, she exclaimed: —

“How suddenly you went from Leghorn! I sent down to the Palace Hotel, for I wanted to see you again, but you had gone. I wanted to tell you that I’ve heard from Ella. The tenant of Wichenford has been recalled suddenly to America, and she and Mr Murray are back there for a little while. I thought you would like to know this.”

“Know it? Of course I do. I shall leave Paris to-night,” I said, glad to have news of my well-beloved.

“We also leave to-night. We are on our way back to Studland. Father wired me to meet him in Milan, and I did so. Then he explained that we were going home again, and that we should not return to Italy till the spring.”

He would probably never return to Italy, I thought, though I said nothing, except to congratulate her upon the prospect of spending a few months in Dorsetshire at the old home she loved so well.

At that moment Miller himself entered, surprised to find me there, but shaking my hand warmly said: – “Why, my dear Leaf! who would have thought to find you here? I believed you were in England.”

“Miss Lucie sent me word that you were passing through Paris,” I explained, “so it was my duty to call and pay my compliments.”

“We’ve just been on a flying visit to Italy,” he said. “I had some rather pressing affairs to attend to in Rome. To-night, however, we go back to Studland.”

“Mr Leaf is also crossing with us,” remarked his daughter.

“Oh! excellent!” exclaimed the man whom I had last seen cramming those ill-gotten notes into his pockets, his face flushed with the eager lust for wealth, his voice raised loudly in angry protest against an equal division of the booty. “We’ll meet at the Gare du Nord, eh?”

Calm, grey-faced, distinguished-looking and of gentlemanly bearing, surely no one would have ever dreamed that his character was such as it really had been proved to be. He offered me a cigarette, lit one himself, and all three of us went out for a stroll along the Boulevard and the Rue de la Paix. We lunched together in one of the little restaurants in the Palais Royal, but neither by word nor deed did Miller display any fear of recognition.

I wondered in what direction Gavazzi had fled; and would have given a good deal to know how they had managed to get through those formidable bars which I had believed unbreakable.

Lucie’s father being with us the whole time, I had no opportunity of speaking to her alone. At three o’clock I left them at the hotel, and at nine that evening joined them in the night-mail for Calais and London.

On board the steamer, Miller went below, while I got Lucie a deck-chair, wrapped her in an oilskin borrowed from a seaman, and sat beside her.

The night was a perfect one, with a bright full moon shining over the Channel, and as we sat we watched the flashing light of Calais slowly disappearing at the stern.

“Your father seems to be returning quite unexpectedly to England,” I said presently, after she had been admiring the reflection of the moon upon the glittering waters.

“Yes. I was quite surprised. He gave me no warning. Poor old dad is always so very erratic. He told me to meet him at the Metropole in Milan, and hardly gave me time to get there. I had to leave the house within an hour of receiving his wire.”

“Did he telegraph from Rome?”

“No. From Ancona, on the Adriatic.”

So he had escaped at once to the other side of Italy without returning to Rome.

“What has Ella told you in her letter?”

“Nothing more than what I have already explained. She makes no mention of – of the man whom we need not name.”

“I am now going home to expose him,” I said determinedly. “I have fully considered all the risks, and am prepared to run them.”

“Ah!” she cried, turning to me in quick alarm, “do not do anything rash, I beg of you, Mr Leaf! There is some mystery – a great mystery which I am, as yet, unable to fathom – but to speak at this juncture would assuredly only implicate her. Of that I feel sure from certain information already in my possession.”

“You’ve already told me that. But surely you don’t think I can stand by and see her go headlong to her ruin without stretching forth a hand to save her. It is my duty, not only as her lover but also as a man. The fellow is a thief and a scoundrel.”

When we love much we ourselves are nothing, and what we love is all.

“I only beg of you to be patient and be silent – at least for the present,” she urged.

Was she in fear, I wondered, lest any revelation I made should implicate her father? Was it possible that she had any suspicion that he was at that moment seeking asylum in his comfortable English home?

All the disjointed admissions which she had made regarding her acquaintance with the dead Minister for Justice, her appeal to him to speak the truth and clear her of some mysterious stigma, and her mention of the Villa Verde out at Tivoli crowded upon me. When we suffer very much everything that smiles in the sun seems cruel.

Beneath that beautiful face, pale in the bright moonbeams shining upon it, was mystery – a great unfathomable mystery. Was she not daughter of one of the cleverest thieves in Europe? And, if so, could she not most probably keep a secret if one were entrusted to her?

For some ten minutes or so I was silent. The engines throbbed, the dark waters hissed past, and swiftly we were heading for the lights of Dover.

At any moment Miller, who had gone below to get a whisky and soda with a friend he had met, a gentlemanly-looking Englishman, might return. I wondered whether it were judicious to tell her one fact.

At last I spoke.

“You recollect, Miss Miller, that you once mentioned the Villa Verde, at Tivoli, where, I think, Nardini lived the greater part of the year?”

“Yes,” was her rather mechanical answer. “Why? What causes you to recollect that?”

“Because – well, because the other day I learnt something in confidence concerning it.”

“Concerning the villa!” she gasped, starting and turning to me with a changed expression of fear and apprehension. “What – what were you told? Who told you?”

“Well, probably it is a fact of which you are unaware, for only the police know it, and they have hushed it up,” I said. “After the flight of Nardini the police who went to search the villa and seize his effects made a very startling discovery.”

“Discovery! What did they find?” she inquired eagerly, her face now blanched to the lips.

“The body of a young woman – the young Englishwoman who was your friend!” I said, with my eyes fixed upon her.

She started forward, glaring at me open-mouthed. She tried to speak, but no sound escaped her lips. Her gloved hands were trembling, her dark eyes staring out of her head.

“Then the police have searched!” she gasped at last.

“They know the truth! I – I am – ”

And she fell back again into the long deck-chair, rigid and insensible.