“Twelfth century,” the old priest murmured to himself as he put on his big, heavy-rimmed glasses—the magnifying glasses he always used when pursuing his palæographical studies. “That is evident from the signs for ‘et,’ and by the ‘a’s.’ ” Then he read and re-read several lines, against which he had placed marks.
“Yes,” he went on, “I have carried out all the instructions to the very letter. Soon—very soon—we shall see whether the result is such as is claimed. The man who placed this secret upon record may have done so in order to fool any who might be able to read his abbreviations and understand his cryptic references. Yet, somehow, I’m inclined to think the contrary. The record bears upon its face the mark of being genuine. I am more than ever convinced that it is the actual lost secret of the great Doge Dandolo of Venice, the man who swept away his enemies like flies, and who captured Constantinople! The two Foscari are known to have possessed it and used it, and now—and now it has fallen into my hands! Yes, I am certain it is what I suspect. There is that mysterious passage towards the end which speaks of the Michieli and the Morosini families, plain proof of the motive of such a secret being placed upon record! And I bought it—the secret of the Doge Dandolo—for ten soldi!”
Slowly he deciphered word after word, softly chuckling to himself, his hooked nose the more accentuated until, bent beneath the lamp, he looked like some evil bird of prey, gloating eagerly over the triumph which he knew must be his.
From the pocket of his ragged cassock he took two letters. One was written in German, and as he read it he smiled. Enclosed was a German banknote for five hundred marks.
“To be sent to the poste-restante at Cologne,” he muttered as he read. “I wonder what this Herr Mayer intends? Tired of his wife, perhaps—or waiting for dead men’s shoes! It is always either for love—or for money. Yet I sell them what they want, and it matters not to me to what use it may be put.”
The other letter bore the Paris postmark, a few lines in a well-educated feminine hand, addressed to a certain Signor Corradini at a newspaper shop in Dean Street, Soho, London. A thousand-franc note was enclosed, with a request that “the medicine” be sent to Madame Lambert, in the Rue Muret, at Chartres. The writer, judging from the note-paper, was some elegant Parisienne, who had arranged to have the “medicine” sent to a maid, or some friend in whom she could trust.
At regular intervals letters addressed to that obscure newsvendor’s in Soho in the name of Corradini were sent to him in Italy. Surely it was a strange correspondence.
“Dio mio!” he laughed as he turned over the Frenchwoman’s letter. “I have, indeed, a curious clientèle! Some of them come again and again, growing more daring when they learn that, in effecting its purpose, it leaves no trace. Parents rid themselves of their children, husbands their wives, women their lovers, men their mistresses or their enemies, and the fatalities are all declared to be due to natural causes! In few cases—only with the foolish bunglers—is the truth suspected, yet it cannot be proved in the absence of any trace.”
And he paused, the Frenchwoman’s letter still in his hand.
“Wants freedom from an odious marriage, without a doubt, and has heard of the marvellous ‘cures’ of Giovanni Corradini,” he went on. “Well, well—if I dared to speak I could tell the police some very strange stories. Most of my clients use fictitious names for obvious reasons, yet in many cases I have made inquiry, and before supplying the ‘medicine’ have ascertained the real name of the person who has sought my assistance. Often have I been utterly staggered. Some of the greatest men and women in Europe have been my clients, and the heart secret of many a bereaved man and woman I could, if I chose, lay bare. Ah! yes,” sighed the old man, “my friends are, indeed, a very strange set.”
The small test tube containing the blue liquid had now cooled, and, replacing the letters in his cassock, he relit the small glass spirit lamp; and after adding twenty drops of a certain red fluid, as set out in the crinkled, half-effaced parchment, he again replaced the tube over the blue flame, and, leaning his elbows on the table, watched it boil.
“Diavolo!” he muttered to himself. “How people bungle! Poor Contessa Vanni! What a story in the Corriere della Sera the day before yesterday. A month ago she wrote to London under the name of Annetta Bardi, and gave her address at the Hôtel Europe, in Turin. I sent the extract, and a week later her lover killed her husband, Count Francesco Vanni, in their palazzo at Bologna. But she showed fear, was suspected, arrested, and now has confessed. It is really most annoying. I shall now have to change the address from London to Paris, as she may tell whence she obtained the few drops of extract, and a trap may be set. A trap! And yet I have successfully avoided all traps for the past eleven years!” he laughed harshly. “Corpo di Bacco! I’ve sent out a good many homœopathic doses in that time—I’ve been responsible, I suppose, for a good many mysteries. How often have I seen in the papers accounts of the sudden death of one well-known person or another, and have traced the hand of one or other of my mysterious clients. This world of ours is, indeed, a curious study, and perhaps no more lucrative profession exists than that which I have followed with so much success and in such secrecy!”
He was watching the bubbling of the liquid in the glass tube above the flame. It had turned a bright orange. He placed his watch on the table beside him, and then slowly and very carefully re-read the directions in the ancient manuscript.
Presently, from the capacious pocket of his old cassock as it hung upon a nail, he drew forth a tiny wooden box, which, on being opened, disclosed a few small white crystals. With a pair of tweezers, and still wearing the gloves, he took a single crystal and dropped it into the orange-coloured fluid, when at once it turned a dark, dull green.
He again referred to the manuscript, and, well satisfied at the result obtained, blew out the flame to allow the liquid to cool.
“If it is what it is claimed, then it is a far safer and more potent spinal poison than the other. Against the one I have placed in commerce the difficulty has always been its subcutaneous injection. But this—this is most terrible and fatal—a mere touch externally upon the skin, and the noxious action upon the body will commence, and terminate with death. It is the mysterious poison of the Doge Dandolo, of Venice, and probably, later, of the Borgias themselves. A single touch, and no trace is left, yet death must surely ensue. Unknown to the modern toxicologist, it is the only means of destroying life without arousing the slightest suspicion. So if any previous extract has been worth so much to me, what is this not worth—providing it is what this ancient record claims? But we will see.”
And taking a small quantity of fine white powder, he spread it upon a piece of glass, and upon it poured out a few drops of the dark green liquid, which the powder at once absorbed.
Then releasing the whining dog, which at once turned and tried to lick his face, he took a pair of scissors and clipped off closely a portion of the fur beneath the shoulder, where the skin showed pink and tender.
Then, dabbing one of the fingers of his safety glove into the damp powder spread upon the glass, he carefully applied it to the animal’s skin, stroking it three times across the spot whence the hair had been removed.
Afterwards he released the animal, which began to frisk as before, wagging his tail merrily while the hook-nosed old man watched calmly.
Twenty seconds later by the watch, the animal suddenly halted. A convulsive shiver shook its frame. Its body began to twist with short, spasmodic movements, and it looked up, crying piteously at its torturer. In forty seconds from the time of the deadly application it was lying upon its back, its body writhing and distorted; in seventy seconds it lay stretched out, dead.
“Benissimo!” cried the old priest, rubbing his gloved hands enthusiastically. “Here at last have I recovered the secret of the external poison of the ancients—the means by which whole families may, if necessary, be wiped out without the slightest danger, or even suspicion! A new commodity for my clients!” he laughed aloud. “When it becomes known what I can now supply—that a small quantity dusted into a glove, placed upon the handle of a knife, or upon the pages of a book will produce the desired effect—then there will be rush to secure some, just as before.”
He paused, glancing across at the dog’s body lying in the shadow.
“It is really surprising,” he continued, still murmuring to himself, “surprising how, without advertisement, one receives those well-disguised applications, accompanied always by remittances. But this new commodity must be given a real and actual trial—upon the human body as well as upon that of the animal.”
And beneath the lamp-light his aquiline face relaxed into a dark, evil grin.
An owl was hooting mournfully outside. It was the only sound.
In that ruined place a great and appalling fact had been rediscovered—the means by which human life could be destroyed in defiance of detection even by all the tests of the modern analyst.
Surely the thin, gloved right hand of Don Mario Mellini was the Hand of Death!
CHAPTER XXV.
CONCERNS THE UNEXPECTED
The old priest rose unceremoniously, kicked the dog’s body away beneath a bench out of sight, and then, returning to the table, carefully collected the fatal powder, dried it, and placed it in a tiny glass-stoppered phial.
After spreading some more of the powder upon the glass, he treated it in a similar fashion, again drying it by holding the sheet of glass over the flame of the spirit-lamp and continually moving it about.
Having thus exhausted all the fluid, the ingredients of which had taken him over a fortnight to prepare, he placed the powder in the phial, which he carefully sealed with black wax.
The old man, bent to his work of sealing up the deadly compound he had prepared, was, truth to tell, one of the greatest experts in Europe upon the history and properties of poisons and their effects upon the living body.
Beneath the cloak of religion he had for many years prosecuted experiments, both in the small back room in his own presbytery, which he always kept locked from old Teresa, and in that secret laboratory wherein he was now closeted.
He was speaking to himself in Italian as he dropped the hot wax upon the glass stopper of the phial.
“The truth contained in this manuscript,” he murmured, “has upset all the previous theories and calculations of toxicologists. Absorption has been believed to vary in its degree and rapidity, not only according to the state of the poison, but according to the nature of the surface to which it is applied. All the known poisons which can be absorbed through the unbroken skin, such as belladonna, creosote, prussic acid, morphia, and the like, are absorbed slowly; when the cuticle is removed, and the surface of the true skin is laid bare, then the absorption takes place with much greater rapidity. In this discovery of mine the substance itself seems to act chemically upon the skin, and thus leads to rapid and complete absorption.”
He took the lamp, recovered the dog’s body, and examined the place whereon he had rubbed the deadly powder.
There was no mark whatever upon the skin—nothing to show how death had been caused.
“For a woman,” he laughed, “the powder may be darkened and placed upon her hair-comb. For a man, a little upon his penholder, the handle of his walking-stick, or upon his shaving-soap. A disease of the spinal marrow will at once be caused—an unknown disease, which will puzzle the whole medical profession. In the manuscript the symptoms are described—violent spasms, the limbs separated, stiff and rigid, and violent shakings of the whole body. At first the spasms are marked down the back and legs, but after a brief period they fix upon the chest, and result in violent tetanus, with fixation of the muscles of respiration, death supervening with the intellect perfectly clear. In the dog those symptoms have been exact—so they will be in the case of the person upon whom experiment must be made.”
Don Mario’s source of income was surely an amazing one. His snug bank balance was being constantly added to by those mysterious remittances which were reaching him so frequently from all corners of Europe.
He now removed the gloves he wore for safety, and, opening a drawer in a rickety old cupboard, took out a tiny glass tube an inch long, sealed with red wax, and a small, sharp, hollow-steel pin about four inches long, and ending with an indiarubber bulb—something like the filler for a fountain-pen. After scribbling a few words in pencil on a piece of paper, he packed all together in cotton wool in a small box—a poisoner’s outfit—and, after sealing it for registered post, wrote upon it the address of Madame Lambert, in the Rue Muret, at Chartres, France.
The directions were to press the rubber bulb, and so take up the contents of the sealed phial. Then, on touching the living flesh with the hollow pin, the fatal fluid would be injected like the fang of a serpent. It was strongly recommended that the victim be approached while asleep, and, if possible, the instrument should be applied to the scalp, as the hair would then hide the puncture. The pin and phial must at once be got rid of—by burning, if possible.
This mode of destroying life was quite simple and effective—and it was popular.
Italy has ever been the home of the poisoner. From the earliest days the subtle poisons came thence, and to-day there lived in that obscure rock-village the man to whose deadly preparation hundreds of villainous deaths in various towns and cities had been due. He, the man charged with the cure of souls—the man who gabbled Mass each day in that gloomy church heavy with the odour of incense—supplied men and women with the wherewithal to destroy life, to sweep away their enemies, and to profit by the sudden death of their friends.
In every prefecture of police in Europe it had been suspected that there existed a man who supplied secretly some subtle and remarkable poison to purchasers. But so cleverly had Don Mario acted, and so wary was he always, that he had never been suspected.
He had clients who wrote again and again for that curious little outfit; and often when he received from far distant cities those repeat orders he wondered what was in progress, and longed to know the tragic truth. One success always induced the perpetrator to effect a further coup. As many as half a dozen times had the order been repeated in certain cases, which showed plainly that one victim after another had fallen.
In the few cases in the South of Europe where the puncture had been discovered, it had invariably been attributed to the bite of a venomous snake—so closely did it resemble it. And yet no reptile had been discovered.
Presently he took out a second outfit, phial and pin complete, and, carefully packing it, addressed it to Herr Herman Mayer, at the poste-restante in Cologne. Both packets he placed in the capacious pocket of his old cassock, his intention being to send them over the mountains into Perugia on the morrow, to be dispatched by post from there. He was too wary either to receive correspondence or dispatch the “extracts” from the little post office at Santa Lucia.
Before the dull, gilt altar, with its tawdry decorations, this man so often chanted, with that slow, droning, nasal intonation: “Miserere mei, Deus, secundum magnam misericordiam tuam. Et secundum multitudinem miserationum tuarum, dele iniquitatem meam.” And yet he dispatched that fatal extract, well knowing for what dastardly purpose it was required. He always sent the little outfit anonymously. The letters to the mysterious Signor Corradini were forwarded from the newsvendors in Dean Street, Soho, thence to a house in the Place Vert in Antwerp, whence they were sent to a friend in Paris, who, in turn, sent them to the curato of Santa Lucia—the pious, sedate, and sympathetic priest who led such a quiet and colourless life. Yet this man, who fasted daily before saying Mass, and who was so observant of all the rules of his religion, was reaping a golden harvest from those anxious and eager to commit murder without risk of detection.
Besides old Alexandrovski of Odessa, an ex-professor at the Imperial Hospital at Moscow, recently arrested, Don Mario was the only regular and reliable purveyor of poisons in Europe—truly a highly lucrative undertaking.
The quick growth of his secret clientèle had been remarkable. Apparently one person recommended him to another, even though the recommendation was in itself tantamount to an admission of guilt. Truly any prohibited profession always prospers.
Of a sudden, as he reflected, it seemed to occur to him to test the potency of the liquid he was about to dispatch to Cologne and Chartres. Therefore he took a third needle, and, after filling it slowly, drew out a struggling rabbit from the cage.
With a quick movement he injected the deadly fluid into the animal’s blood.
The effect was almost electrical. In twenty seconds the poor animal lay dead.
The hook-nosed old priest watched the result, and grunted in satisfaction.
He, the man who always expressed such solicitude for the welfare of the poor of the village; he to whom the ignorant contadini looked for guidance and assistance; the man beloved even by those ruffianly men who were little better than the bygone brigands of the Maremma, was of strangely complex character. His heart bled for those starving contadini who were little better than the slaves of the padrone who lived in wealth and luxury away in Perugia, Siena or Rome; and yet he could look on at the tortured agony of those dumb animals without the slightest trace of feeling. He sold those deadly little outfits, fully aware that by their agency innocent men and women, even children, were being sacrificed by the crafty criminal to secure his or her own dastardly ends.
Suddenly noticing the dog’s body lying there, mute evidence of the terrible potency of his most recent discovery, he took it, and, dragging it forth out of the door, flung it away into the copse.
Afterwards he returned and cleansed his hands in the bucket of water standing in the corner of the kitchen.
The ancient manuscript was lying half curled up upon the table, and this he carefully rolled, prior to replacing it in his pocket.
Suddenly, without warning, he gave vent to a low, horrified shriek. He noticed that upon the faded parchment some of the fatal powder had been spilt.
And he had touched it! His hand had come into contact with it, for the tips of his two fingers looked dusty.
“Dio mio!” he shrieked in terror. “I—I never noticed it!” and, dashing across to the bucket, he again plunged both hands frantically into the water.
“Surely I am not to be the first victim of my own preparation! But—Santa Madonna!—I feel a pain—a strange pain down the spine!” and he placed both hands behind his back, declaring to himself that fiery pains seemed to be shooting through him.
There was an absence of pain in his hands. The poison had been absorbed rapidly and was effecting its work. The spinal cord was already attacked. It was the first symptom!
He stood rigid, aghast, as the horrible truth became only too apparent.
“Madre di Dio!” he shrieked wildly again. “I—I’m poisoned! I——” and he stood stiff, his eyes starting from his head, his jaws fixed, in unspeakable terror.
His limbs were trembling violently. He felt constriction in the throat, tingling and numbness in the hands and feet, and loss of muscular power.
“Diamine! It was my own fault! I should have been more careful!” gasped the unhappy man, looking helplessly around his improvised laboratory. “It is Fate!—accursed Fate—that I should be the first to die by the deadly compound I have rediscovered—to die the death of a dog!”
Violent spasms seized him. He felt that he could not breathe, and a cold perspiration stood in beads upon his brow. But still there was no pain in the tips of his fingers which had come into contact with the fatal powder. His face and hands were livid.
Of a sudden he left the table against which he had been supporting himself, and staggered across to the drawer which stood half open.
From it he snatched up a little hypodermic syringe, and, with the last strength he possessed, filled it from a small phial, and stuck the needle into his left wrist.
Next second he fell heavily forward upon the floor, his limbs stiff and rigid, his mouth spasmodically closed. The eyes protruded, the pupils were dilated, as though he were peering in horror into the torment beyond.
A sharp spasm shot through him, causing his whole body to shake violently.
Then all was still—the stillness of death.
CHAPTER XXVI.
THE FESTA OF CORPUS DOMINI
When old Teresa set out the big bowl of coffee and milk and the long rolls of bread and small pats of butter before the guest on that bright, sunny morning she wished him buona festa.
It was Corpus Domini. The procession was the great day of the year in Santa Lucia, as in every other village, or little borgo, throughout the Apennines.
The sindaco, old Marco Simonetti, who was a libero pensiero, yearned to have it suppressed. He would have forbidden banners, music, colours, lights, public services, masses and vespers. But the villagers were not of the same mind. They loved the gay processions which gave the girls an opportunity of showing off their finery, and they attended the mass said by their dear old Don Mario. Most houses had open doors and a full table that day, and at nightfall there were dancing and illuminations in the little piazza.
Already the old church bells were jangling, for since dawn Gaspardo, the hunchback who acted as sacristan, had been tugging the ropes, announcing to Santa Lucia the one day of its year.
Ambrose sat in the small, bare room where the flies buzzed noisily in the sunshine, awaiting his host’s appearance. Don Mario did not break his fast, of course, till after he had said mass.
The Englishman sat in a low chair with folded arms, his face turned to the little garden where, through the open door, showed the wealth of roses, magnolias and lemons, the lilies and stocks and sweet-smelling carnations, while the little pergola was well-shaded by a leafy vine—a vine that was cool and restful.
Santa Lucia was waiting in eager expectation. The people knew how very peacefully and piously the festa began. Then how good-natured and gay it quickly became, for they, ignorant peasants as they were, mingled the sacred with the profane in a strange jumble. With devoutness they would one moment sing “O salutaris” as they followed the Host, and the next would hum waltz music or sing snatches of comic songs as they jumped around in the dance.
In the gloomy old church, now gay with lights and decorations, many men and women had assembled. All was hushed. Those who spoke whispered.
They were awaiting the revered old curato—the director of their festa.
But they waited, and waited so long that everyone began to wonder.
Gaspardo, in his frayed black gown, came into the presbytery and whispered with Teresa. Then he ascended the stairs to the Signor Reverendo’s room.
A minute later Teresa approached their English guest, saying with great concern:
“Scusi tanto, signore, but the padrone is out. It is very strange that he does not return, when he knows to-day is the festa.”
“Oh, I suppose he has gone out for a walk, and is detained,” replied the Englishman. “I am in no hurry; I will wait till his return.”
And rising he went forth into the piazza where many people had assembled in the bright sunshine, and where he received their good-natured greetings because he was the curato’s friend.
A drum and some battered brass instruments were piled beneath a tree, and a stall had been set up for the sale of sweetmeats to the children. All were dressed in their best. Most of the young men had their jackets slung on one shoulder and their shirts well ruffled above the trouser-band. Some wore jays’ wings in their broad-brimmed hats set askew; others were in their everyday clothes, well brushed, with polished boots. The girls were in bright colours, many of them with freshly plucked flowers in their hair, a gay, laughing, chattering throng, full of anticipation of the day’s merriment.
Santa Lucia was in festa. On that one day in the whole year she forgot her troubles, the oppression of the Government and the landowner, the brutality of the fattore, or agent, and the black starvation which was so often endured through the dark months of winter.
Gradually the crowd in the piazza was increasing. The little church was now filled to overflowing, and everyone waited—waited for the coming of Don Mario, without whom the religious festival could not proceed.
A man, a carter, approached John Ambrose, doffed his hat politely, and inquired if the Signor Reverendo were indisposed.
“Oh, no,” replied the elderly Englishman in excellent Italian. “Not at all. He went out this morning for an early walk, and has not yet returned. He will, no doubt, be here in a few minutes.”
The carter explained this to a group of men standing near, and quickly the rumour spread that the curato was absent—mysteriously absent.
The first feeling was one of distinct antagonism. Don Mario knew that it was Corpus Domini, and at least he should be present. It was his duty. The Government paid him to be there, to fast, to say mass, and to conduct the procession and the subsequent festa. It was really too bad to keep half the village waiting in the church while he leisurely took his morning stroll.
An hour passed, but the curato did not come—another hour—and yet another—even until the noon-day sun rose high in the cloudless heavens, the people waited, wondering—and still wondering.
Then wonder gave place to anxiety. Something must surely have happened, they whispered among themselves. What could have occurred?
Don Mario would never wilfully desert them like that.
The whole piazza was agog. The festa was forgotten in the intense anxiety as to what had befallen their beloved curato.
Old Mr. Ambrose held counsel with Teresa and Gaspardo.
“The padrone must have gone out very early,” declared the old crone. “I was up soon after four, but I heard nothing. He must have gone out before then.”
“Something has happened to him,” the hunchback declared huskily. “He is always so very particular that Corpus Domini should be kept well, and that the people shall be satisfied. He gives ten lire to the man who keeps the sweet-stall, so that the children shall have sweets distributed. I cannot understand.”
“Well, what shall we do?” asked Ambrose, himself alarmed at his friend’s non-appearance.
His secret fear was that Don Mario had descended the hill during his walk, and had perhaps fallen into the hands of a couple of carabineers awaiting him. Scotland Yard might have suspicion of him, and if so, they would request the Pubblica Sicurezza in Rome to effect his arrest. And yet, as he reflected, he suddenly recollected that the Italian Government never gave up their subjects for offences committed abroad.
The thought was a gratifying one. And yet if Don Mario were a free agent he would hear the festa bells of his own church still ringing, and they would surely recall him to duty, even if he had forgotten.
Gaspardo, the crooked, sun-tanned old fellow who had never been beyond the confines of the commune, urged that a party of men be sent forth to search the adjacent woods, for, as he put it, “an accident may have befallen our dear curato, and he may be lying somewhere insensible.”
Ambrose was silent. He knew not what to do. Perhaps if the party went forth they would ascertain that Don Mario was already on his way to Rome, handcuffed between two carabineers. If so, might it not be his own turn next?
He knew well that Scotland Yard had discovered the friendship between Richard Goodrick and Don Mario, who lodged in Denbigh Street. They had searched, and failed to find the priest. Perhaps they had now been successful, and had preferred some charge against him. Who could tell?
“But this absence of your master is not exactly unusual, is it?” he asked of the hunchback.
“Oh, he has been absent often—for weeks and weeks at his own home away in the north,” was the sacristan’s reply. “But we always have a deputy, generally young Don Lippo, who comes from the Abruzzi. He has never before left us without a word.”
“Except once, Gaspardo,” interrupted the old donna di casa. “You remember about three winters ago, when he suddenly disappeared just like this, and six days later we had a letter from him bearing a foreign stamp. It was English, old Faello said. So he had evidently gone to England.”
“Bah! they say so, but I don’t believe it. The padrone goes to see his brother somewhere in Novara. He never goes abroad. That is only gossip,” said the hunchback.
“But he goes strolling about o’ nights, Gaspardo,” declared the old woman. “You know he does. You know what they’ve been saying of late about his midnight walks.”
“The sindaco and his friends say that—because they must say something against everybody. I know all about it. They’ve been busy hinting that he has a clandestine love-affair—he, at his age! Oh! really it is too funny!”
“Yes, they say he goes down the hill in the night to meet somebody of the opposite sex,” snapped the old crone. At this John Ambrose pricked up his ears.
“How long has this rumour been current?” he inquired of the old man.
“Oh! about three months, I think, signore. Of course, it is only spread in order to prejudice him. They have never been able to say who the woman really is—and if they could, they certainly would.”
“But the fact remains that the padrone does go out very often at nights—on wet nights also, they say. Well, where does he go?” asked Teresa.
“How can I tell, woman? If he has been watched, as you say, then the watchers must know,” replied the hunchback quickly.
“But they are saying all sorts of things out in the piazza,” declared Teresa. “The only way is to tell them to search the woods—if the signor Inglese agrees.”
John Ambrose had no other course than to agree. He recognised that the attitude of the village, deprived of their festa, was becoming threatening. A quarter of an hour ago, while in the piazza, he saw the black looks of the disappointed men. A lad started to strum upon a mandoline, and was roughly cuffed for playing music.
The little flags waved in the summer breeze, but there was no music, no gaiety, no laughter. The village had become sulky in its bitter disappointment.
At two o’clock a large party of men assembled, and under the leadership of a tall, swarthy giant, Vincenzio Canterelli, who kept a trattoria and wine-shop, and was known to all in Cencio, went down the hillside to search the woods.
Ambrose, standing beside the low wall of the piazza and looking over the sunlit valley below, watched the party with their dogs break up into smaller parties and go forth in different directions in search of the missing priest.
Most of the men of Santa Lucia descended to the plain to assist, leaving the women to chatter, gossip, and form all sorts of wild theories as to the curato’s absence.
The Englishman overheard some strange rumours during that long, anxious afternoon—rumours which caused him to ponder deeply. That Don Mario was in the habit of taking nocturnal rambles was evidently common knowledge, and though a love affair was hinted at, yet there seemed no tangible evidence of his ever being seen in conversation with any woman.
The long, hot hours dragged by, but the men did not return. From the piazza the women watched the tiny groups moving like insects over the green country deep below. And as the time passed, and the sun sank slowly over the Maremma and the distant sea, the anxiety increased.
Something had certainly happened to Don Mario. A dark shadow had fallen upon the village of Santa Lucia.
Evening fell, but no one had the heart, or even dared to light those little lamps hung around the piazza. The drum and the brass instruments still stood piled against the tree. The sweetmeat stall had been removed. The day was over—it had passed for the first time for ten centuries without the feast of Corpus Domini.
Men were arriving home jaded and fagged after a fruitless search. For a great many miles around the whole of the country-side had been examined with scrupulous care—the quarries, the precipitous rocks, the woods and streams had all been patrolled to no purpose.
Night was closing in and Don Mario was still missing. He had mysteriously and absolutely disappeared.
It was late; indeed, the moon had risen before the last search-party came up through the narrow mediæval gateway, which led, steep down, to the road to Rome.
They were shouting, and quickly the village became aroused. The people rushed from the piazza to the old gateway.
Then they saw, by the flickering lamps, that a dozen men were carrying gently something upon boards.
“We have found him!” the men were shouting excitedly. “We have found him!” cried Vincenzio. “But——”
And the outburst of the anxious villagers drowned the rest of the man’s sentence, as they turned with their burden up the narrow lane towards the small white presbytery.
John Ambrose dashed towards them, a lantern in his hand.
He held it high as he looked upon his friend’s white, upturned face, then uttering a cry, he let the lamp drop from his nerveless fingers upon the grass-grown stones.
CHAPTER XXVII.
FROM OUT THE PAST
That night John Ambrose sat silent, motionless, and thoughtful at the bedside of his unconscious friend.
He had been found by one of the dogs lying unconscious in the woods, four kilometres distant. Apparently he had been on his way home, and had dropped from exhaustion. He was without his cassock, a fact which had given rise to much comment in the village.
“He will explain it all when he comes to his senses,” they said. The doctor from Acquapendente had been summoned, and had sat for half an hour in that bare little upstairs room declaring that his patient had evidently suffered some severe shock. Restoratives applied were all to no purpose. He was white and pulseless, his heart beating only faintly.
“To what, in your opinion, doctor, is the attack due?” Ambrose asked anxiously.
“Ah! caro signore, I really cannot tell. Perhaps some sudden fright—perhaps the effect of exhaustion. It can only be cured by complete rest.”
So the unsuspecting medico had prescribed, and left the curato to the care of old Teresa and his guest. Medical science is not very advanced in the obscurer villages in Central Italy, and the diagnosis of the doctor from Acquapendente was by no means a correct one.
Old Teresa remained below, but the hunchback came and went noiselessly, inquiring from time to time after the health of the padrone, while the Englishman sat anxiously watching his closest friend.
What had occurred? What sudden fright could Don Mario have possibly sustained?
The more superstitious in the village were declaring that the priest had encountered the Evil One himself in the woods, and that Satan had triumphed. But the others shook their heads dubiously and scented mystery.
In the long watches of the night John Ambrose sat motionless, watching intently the prostrate unconscious man who had been found lying across the narrow footpath leading through the wood towards Monteleone. His body had been drawn up, as though by pain, his white bony fingers clenched into the palms.
Once, only once since he had been laid upon his own narrow, little iron bedstead had he shown signs of life—a deep, long-drawn sigh. Still his faithful friend watched by him, ever anxious for returning consciousness.
The face upon the pillow was deadly pale, the nose more hooked than usual, the sallow cheeks sunken, the eyes half-closed.
As John Ambrose gazed around the bare little whitewashed chamber where a small red light burned before the time-blackened ancient picture of the Madonna and Child, whereon had been placed a dead spray of flowers, he could not help his thoughts running back a good many years.
The doctor from Acquapendente had expressed a fear that the curato was dying. He might never recover consciousness, he had declared before he left—promising to return again at dawn.
And as John Ambrose sat with his gaze upon the thin, pale face, just discernible in the dim light of the oil lamp, there arose before him the vision of an autumn day long ago, when Ellersdale, his great ancestral mansion in Dorsetshire—one of the show places of England—had been filled by a gay shooting-party; for he usually gave two each pheasant season.
Prime Minister of England, a bachelor, owner of one of the finest estates in the kingdom, and the trusted friend and adviser of his Sovereign, his was surely the proudest position a man could hold. Among his guests were many notable people, as well as his youngest brother, the Honourable Rollo Lambton, with his wife and infant daughter, Irene, and not least among those noteworthy guests was Father Mellini, the fashionable Roman Catholic preacher. A man of elegant and commanding presence, good-looking beyond the average, he was highly popular among the women of smart society who fêted and lionised him.
Political duties had recalled the Earl to Downing Street, but he had been absent from his guests only one day when, at evening, on stepping from his carriage and entering the great vaulted hall at Ellersdale, Hinkson, his butler, had handed him a note.
Opening it, he found a few brief words of farewell from Don Mario, who explained that he had been suddenly called to London by the Cardinal at Westminster, who wished to see him. The Earl expressed no surprise, for Father Mellini’s movements were often erratic, as he laughingly told his other guests over the dinner-table that night.
Three nights later—ah! how well he recollected that fateful evening—a strange incident occurred. All the other guests had left the smoking-room and retired when, as was his habit, he had invited his brother Rollo into his own den, a small, cosy oak-panelled room, for a final cigar before turning in.
He noticed that Rollo, tall, thin and athletic, was somewhat annoyed, and attributed it to the fact that he had been unlucky at bridge. But he flung himself into the big arm-chair before the fire, took a cigar from the box, bit off the end viciously and applied a match to it. He had always been against his brother’s marriage with the giddy, ill-bred little woman, who was a Catholic and had been bred in the suburbs of London, and now, as he had predicted, she flirted outrageously, and caused poor Rollo much pain and anxiety. He had mentioned it on the previous night, and his remarks had led to some angry words between them—words that were overheard by two of the guests.
They had been smoking together for five minutes or so, in that silent, old-world room to which he always retired when desirous of quiet, and Rollo had just poured out his whisky and soda, when he suddenly uttered a strange cry, and, half-rising from his chair, fell back, gasping that he had been seized by a strange pain in the throat.
The cigar had fallen from his fingers, and with both hands he was tearing at his collar convulsively. Lord Ellersdale, greatly alarmed, loosened it, and gave his brother a draught of soda-water. But the sharp agony increased, his limbs shook, and he complained of shooting, excruciating pains down the back.
“Get a doctor, John—quick!” he managed to gasp. “I—I believe I’m dying!”
The Earl rang the bell violently, but before any of the servants arrived his brother Rollo had collapsed and breathed his last.
His wife, the pretty, fair-haired young woman in her pale blue dressing-gown—the woman whose flirtations had scandalised the whole house-party—threw herself beside him, almost insane with grief. It was indeed a terrible scene. Try how he would, he could never forget—never. Neither could he rid himself of those painful recollections of all that followed; of the inquest; of the evidence of the Home Office analyst that the cigar smoked by the dead man had been impregnated with some most deadly substance—some unknown neurotic poison. Then the local police had visited Ellersdale, seized the box of cigars, and found another of them to have been prepared, while on searching his lordship’s den, they discovered, locked in one of the drawers of an old buhl cabinet, a tiny glass-stoppered phial, half-filled with some brown liquid, which proved to be the poison used upon the cigars.
The discovery staggered him. He alone had kept the key of that cabinet, yet he had no knowledge whatever of possessing poison. How it had come there he could not tell. His reputation, both as Prime Minister of England and as a private citizen, was now at stake. He knew that the quarrel with his brother regarding the latter’s wife had been overheard—therefore the circumstantial evidence against him was complete. He was quick to realise the worst.
In his intense agony of mind, and in hourly fear of arrest and consequent scandal upon his political party, he sought his old and most intimate friend, Gilbert Cunningham, an Under-Secretary of State, who was one of the house-party. He, in turn, consulted Sir Frank Nesbitt, and they, in the very strictest confidence, interviewed the Home Secretary, the result being that the warrant already issued for Lord Ellersdale’s arrest was suspended for a week.
Then Cunningham and Nesbitt had come down to Ellersdale. Ah! how vividly he recollected that tragic interview in his own great brown library where, with locked doors, they told him frankly that his innocence would never be believed by a jury, that it was alleged he had killed his brother at the instigation of the latter’s wife, and that the only way to escape arrest and trial was—suicide!
At first he vehemently protested, but the pair sat inexorable, sphinx-like. Then they told him an amazing fact. His sister-in-law had made a statement seriously incriminating him, they said. The Party must not suffer. On hearing that, he bowed to their decision, and announced boldly that he would rather die by his own hand than bring scandal and shame upon his political friends. One thing he asked—that the Sovereign should not be told.
And so it was that his illness was announced, and soon afterwards the papers reported his unexpected death. Yet, so well was the whole secret kept—the two doctors receiving big fees for their certificate, and the undertakers for not looking inside the coffin—that not half a dozen people knew how he had been hounded to his end, or that any allegation had been brought against him. The Sovereign sent a representative with a wreath to his funeral, and even his great friend, Sir George Ravenscourt, remained in ignorance, for Cunningham and Nesbitt kept their oath of silence. Two years later both had died, within a few months of each other.
From the position of Prime Minister and holder of the Earldom of Ellersdale, with a handsome income, a deer-forest in Scotland, and a villa at Cannes, the broken man passed, in one single hour, to the obscurity of Richard Goodrick, the eccentric lodger in Charlwood Street, Pimlico. His elder brother succeeded to the great estates, while the suburban woman who had made that mysterious and incriminating statement regarding him went abroad, taking with her her little child.
Three years later she died of phthisis in Geneva, and little Irene, left an orphan, had been brought to England by Sir George and Lady Ravenscourt, who adopted her. It was then that, under the guise of the inoffensive John Ambrose, old Richard Goodrick sought the child out in the park, and ever afterwards kept up that strangely romantic acquaintance.
He still had one firm, faithful friend in Don Mario, who, however, had, soon after his “burial,” fallen into disgrace at the Vatican, and had, alas! been exiled back to that obscure parish in Italy. Yet the one bright spot in his aimless, broken life was the meeting in the park with little Maidee—his pretty, merry-eyed niece, who always called him “Uncle John.”
Through all those long years of weary obscurity and oblivion, the curato of Santa Lucia had never ceased to stand his friend. At infrequent intervals the priest would escape from his barbaric parish in the Umbrian hills and travel post-haste to Denbigh Street, there to be near his old friend—to talk over the past, and to gossip, as in bygone days, when both were great and honoured men.
Don Mario, the man now lying between life and death, was the only living person who knew the truth—who was aware of the real cause of the death of the Earl of Ellersdale, or that, though the fine monument stood to perpetuate his memory in Westminster Abbey, yet he was still alive.
Alas! even he, the devout cleric, his only friend, was now being taken from him!
They had undressed him and laid him upon his narrow, meagre bed.
How different were their positions eighteen years ago—he Prime Minister of England, and the silent, unconscious man there one of the most popular preachers in the United Kingdom.
His own brilliant career had been cut short by that amazing conspiracy which had arisen against him. Someone must have placed those two prepared cigars in the box—someone must have opened that cabinet by means of a false key and hidden the phial therein. For what reason? Either to fix the crime of murder upon him, in order to ruin him both politically and socially, and bring him to the gallows, or perhaps to make it apparent that he himself had wilfully committed suicide.
Somewhere a secret enemy had lurked behind him. But he had been unable to trace his identity. Most probably it had been a political conspiracy, he thought.
Yet what mattered? His two friends Cunningham and Nesbitt believed him to be the murderer of Rollo, so he had bowed bitterly to the fate to which they had condemned him. From the police they had obtained back that tiny phial which they had handed to him so that he might take his own life by the same means as that of his brother had been taken.
Could a man’s public career have ended more tragically?
The old man drew a long, deep sigh as he reviewed the past, his deep-set eyes fixed upon the motionless form of the priest lying upon that narrow bed.
Old Teresa, with sun-browned, wrinkled face, moved noiselessly, stopped to peer in, but uttered no word.
She saw the Signor Inglese bent, with his brow upon his hands—bent beside her padrone, his friend.
She heard him mutter low, broken words in English, but she could not understand them.
She only knew instinctively that her old padrone was slowly dying.
The words uttered by the old Englishman were:
“God forgive me! God forgive!”
CHAPTER XXVIII.
TELLS GORDON’S SECRET
A calm, cloudless evening.
The broad waters of the Channel lay bathed in the brilliant after-glow, for the sun was just disappearing below the horizon, and a fresh, health-giving breeze sprang up as Maidee and Gordon sat together upon a seat high upon Beachy Head.
They were alone. Already in the big lighthouse the light was flashing, it being lit at sundown, while away in the distance ships were passing—the busy traffic of England’s great waterway.
During the past fortnight Maidee had almost completely recovered—sufficiently, indeed, to ascend those steep, grass-covered slopes from Eastbourne. She no longer used her bath-chair, and already her cheeks showed that she was deriving great benefit from the sea air.
In her neat, dark brown tailor-made coat and skirt, and small, close hat with white veil, she presented a smart appearance, while her face, distinguishable through the wisp of net, was surely one which would be remarked anywhere. Gordon, as he sat at her side, her hand tenderly in his, presented a well-set-up figure in dark grey tweeds and soft felt hat. She was secretly proud of him—when on the esplanade she saw how, on every side, people turned and then whispered among themselves that the smart, clean-shaven young man was none other than Gordon Cunningham, the man of the moment, whose name was mentioned almost daily in the papers.
At the Grand, men and women were ever anxious to make his acquaintance, while several young girls had shyly brought her their autograph books, asking her to induce him to sign them.
As she sat there, her face bathed in the crimson sundown, he had wound his arm tenderly about her waist, and, raising her veil, had kissed her upon the lips.
Then, after much hesitation, he at last summoned courage to tell her something—something which he had longed to reveal to her for months, and yet had not dared.
“Maidee,” he said at last, peering into her eyes, “I want you to forgive me. I—I want to tell you something which, before we go further, you should know. I want to confess to you something—so that others may not tell you and, in the telling, distort the story.”
She started, staring at him in alarm.
“Why, Gordon!” she asked, “what’s the matter?”
“Nothing—only I want to tell you something—something about myself—a secret of my life.”
“A secret! Then tell me,” and her gloved fingers closed convulsively upon his as she looked into his face.
“Well, I want to tell you this, dearest,” he said in a low, intense voice, his gaze fixed upon hers. “A few years ago, soon after I left college, I met an elderly man named Tulloch, a financial adventurer, who I have strong reasons to believe was a friend of my late father. Though a man who moved in that shady set which haunts the big London hotels in search of pigeons to pluck, and though always full of schemes that were bogus, yet he became my friend, and to his secret influence I certainly owe my advancement. He assisted me, he said, because he owed a debt of gratitude to my dead father. Sometimes his movements were very strange. He lived in chambers in South Audley Street, and was often absent abroad for long periods—looking after mining properties in which he was interested. After my first journey in the East I met a young girl, who, though in humble circumstances, attracted me, and—well, I may as well confess it at once—I married her at the registry office at Marylebone.”
“Married!” she shrieked, starting up and facing him in dismay.
“Listen to the truth, darling,” he urged very quietly, still holding her hand, and slowly drawing her back to her seat. “Ours was a secret union. Nobody knew—not even Tulloch, my closest friend. We lived in lodgings in the north of London under an assumed name, yet—well, I was not happy. From the first week I knew I had committed a grave error. Yet I had married, and the girl was my wife. Before my marriage my wife had a pet fox-terrier, very old and half-blind, that had belonged to her brother; and one day she declared that the poor animal, being useless and complained of by the landlady, must be destroyed.”
“But why tell me this?” cried Maidee, interrupting. “You are married—Gordon!”
“Hear me to the end,” he said very earnestly. “It is but right that you should know the whole truth. A few days after the suggestion made by my wife, I was, one evening, in Tulloch’s rooms, and our conversation turned upon curios. From a drawer in his writing-table he took a tiny bottle, which he said was one of the strangest curios he possessed—for the half-dried liquid it contained was a most deadly poison, a single drop of it, either taken by the mouth or injected into the blood, being sufficient to cause death. I examined it with curiosity, and asked where he had obtained it, but my inquiry evidently caused him annoyance, for he snatched it from my hand and threw it back into the drawer. Half an hour later, when he had gone into the next room to answer the telephone, I suddenly recollected the blind terrier. Therefore, I opened the drawer, took out the poison, and next day gave it to my wife, telling her to handle the stuff with greatest care. She expressed disbelief that any poison could be so potent, but poured out a small quantity upon a piece of sugar, which she placed on the mantelshelf of the sitting-room, intending to give it to the animal when he came in. I took the bottle back and left, for I was anxious to replace it in Tulloch’s rooms. When I entered his chambers he at once looked me in the face curiously, and asked what I had done with the poison. I fear I was confused, but was compelled to produce it and restore it to him. Judge my horror, however, when, a few hours later, I learnt through the newspapers that my wife had been found mysteriously poisoned almost as soon as I had left her. She had had, I recollected, a slight scratch on her left thumb, and, in holding the sugar as she dropped the fluid upon it, she had, no doubt, absorbed the noxious drug—whatever it was. My first impulse was to go to Camden Town and make a statement to the police. But if I did I should be compelled to acknowledge, my secret marriage. Therefore, I refrained. In my despair I consulted Tulloch, when, to my dismay, he coolly declared me to be a liar, and accused me of the wilful murder of the girl Helen Weaver. He had somehow ascertained that I had married.”
“Helen Weaver!” gasped Maidee, pale and agitated. “And she was your wife, Gordon!”
“Yes, dearest,” he replied in a low tone. “I have told you the whole truth because—well, because from that moment Tulloch became my enemy. He blackmailed me—then disappeared, and I heard he had died in Italy. But only recently he has reappeared again to taunt and torture me with a crime of which I am entirely innocent.”
“But, Gordon, has it not been proved that the girl Weaver, and several other different persons in London, died by exactly the same mysterious drug as did Sir George and that poor old man in Pimlico? And yet this man Tulloch was, as you can prove, in actual possession of the mysterious poison!” she exclaimed.
“I know,” he admitted; “it is all a complete mystery. Tulloch returned, and urged me to put that question in the House—threatened that if I did not he would come to you and allege that I killed Helen; and yet, at the very moment when I had risen to interrogate the Home Secretary, I received an anonymous note declaring that if I did so my secret enemy would encompass my ruin. I stood with ruin on either side; I hesitated—and suppose I must have fainted.”
For a few moments a silence fell between the pair, a silence only broken by the screaming of a gull above them.
Then Maidee, her womanly sympathy asserting itself, took her lover’s hand, saying:
“Poor dear! I did not know all that. I—I ought not to have misjudged you. Forgive me!”
“Of course, darling,” he said, “I have told you this because—well, because I know not from one day to another whether Tulloch may not return and again repeat the dastardly allegation against me.”
She paused, her face turned thoughtfully towards the darkening sea, for the evening light was now fast falling.
“And yet, surely it is a very suspicious circumstance that this man Tulloch, who is your enemy, possessed the drug which has for so long mystified both police and analysts. Medland has told me that both Sir George and the man Goodrick fell victims to it. Could Tulloch have been acquainted with the pair?”
“Who knows? He is a strange person—a man who is a past-master of many professions, especially of politics. Once he told me, I remember, that he knew Sir George.”
“Ah! Then it was he who killed him—without a doubt,” the girl cried. “Cannot we tell Inspector Medland, and let him search for the culprit?”
“I think that would be injudicious at present,” was the young man’s reply. “Tulloch, having returned from the grave once, will again come back to taunt and torture me. When he reappears, then we will tell Medland of our suspicions.”
Maidee inquired what kind of man Tulloch was, and her lover replied, giving a description of him as near as was possible.
“But,” he added, “his very profession compels him to travel rapidly and sometimes to change his personal appearance. He has often confessed to me that to have dealings with thieves one must be a thief oneself.”
“Is he still in London?”
“No—abroad, I expect. Were he in London he would, no doubt, call upon me. He is such an enigma that, on the one hand, he is ever doing me some little service, and yet, on the other, he declares himself ready at any moment to expose my secret marriage with the ill-fated Helen Weaver and assert that she died by my hand.”
“I wish I could tell Uncle John what you have explained to me,” said the girl reflectively.
“Uncle John? Who is he?”
“Only an old gentleman I call uncle, though he is no relation,” she replied. Then, on being pressed by her lover, she, in contradiction of Ambrose’s express wishes, revealed to him her long and strange friendship with the unknown old gentleman who had frequented the parks in order to get sight of her and listen to her childish prattle.
“How very strange!” exclaimed Gordon, when he had heard her to the end. “I wonder who he can be?”
“I don’t know, nor do I care. Only, he is my closest and dearest friend. I am anxious to see him, to ask his opinion regarding this fellow Tulloch—to ask whether he suspects that Tulloch is also responsible for that dastardly attempt to kill me.”
“Where is this Uncle John? Where does he live?”
“He has recently lived over in Walworth; but at present he is away. I last wrote to him to the poste restante at Maçon. He surely will return to London very soon.”
Gordon did not reply. He was thinking over the remarkable and romantic revelation which his well-beloved had just made. Who could the mysterious Uncle John be?
Together they sat hand in hand, almost in silence, watching the great, grey night clouds rising away to the left—watching until the navigating lights of the shipping began to twinkle in the dark blue, and the great, broad, warning ray from the lighthouse showed a bright beam across the darkening waters.
Then they rose. For a few moments he fondly held her slim form in his arms, kissing her passionately upon the lips. Then they retraced their steps down the hill into Eastbourne, both filled with grave wonderment.
That same evening, almost at the very hour when the pair rose to leave that seat high on the summit of the promontory, a respectably dressed woman called at Scotland Yard, and to the constable at the door gave her name as Mrs. Jewell, the wife of a private detective living at Willesden, and having an office in King Street, Covent Garden. She said she wished to see an officer of the Criminal Investigation Department.
After a brief delay, she was taken up in the lift and shown to one of the big, bare waiting-rooms at the end of the corridor, a cheerless, depressing place, in which many a strange story had been told and many a crime revealed.
Presently to her came two officers, one of whom was Inspector Medland.
“I am in great distress, sir,” she said, addressing Medland, who was the older of the pair. “I have lost my husband.”
The detective smiled. The story of lost husbands is an everyday one at the Yard.
“Well?” he said in his sharp, business-like way. “Tell me the facts—as briefly as you can, please.”
“My husband and I had a few words back in January, and he left home to go to his office as usual in the morning. He was at the office all day. About seven o’clock, just as Martin, his clerk, was about to leave, a gentleman called. I’ve got the card which he gave.” And she produced the visiting-card of Sir George Ravenscourt.
This caused Medland to become at once interested.
“Yes,” he said; “go on.”
“Well, the gentleman had been to see my husband before, it seems,” explained Mrs. Jewell, “and after Martin left he remained talking in my husband’s private room. Some private inquiry, I suppose, for my husband does a lot of work for the aristocracy. From that moment till this he hasn’t been seen.”
“You say this occurred in January. Why didn’t you come here before, Mrs. Jewell?”
“Because when he left the house in the morning he said he wouldn’t come back. He’d said that before, and he’d always come back after a day or two, so I waited and waited; but he hasn’t come. Therefore, I’m now afraid that something must have happened to him.”
“What causes you to suspect that, eh?” asked the inspector.
“Because only yesterday I found out that Sir George Ravenscourt had died on the very night my husband disappeared—the night of the seventeenth of January!”
“The seventeenth of January!” echoed Medland, for he knew the man Jewell quite well. He had been a sergeant in the Criminal Investigation Department, and on retirement had set up as a private detective. “And he disappeared on the night of Sir George’s death—eh? Well, what do you suspect?” he asked.
CHAPTER XXIX.
THE ACCUSATION
After lying in a state of coma in his darkened room for over two days, Don Mario slowly struggled back to consciousness.
When, on opening his eyes at last, he saw the pale, anxious face of his friend Ambrose bent over him, he started, glaring at him in horror, as though some hideous phantom of the past had risen against him.
“Well, my dear friend,” exclaimed Ambrose softly, “are you better?”
“Eh? What? Where am I?” asked the priest, staring around his own room. Then, a second later, he sank back, saying: “Ah! I see! Why—I’m at home! I—dreamt I was somewhere else.”
Then for hours he lay motionless in silence, tended by old Teresa and the snuffy old hunchback sacristan. For days he remained convalescent, seated in his chair and receiving visits from the villagers, men and women who came to offer their congratulations, and then went into the church to offer thanks for his recovery.
The priest’s story of his attack was that, in walking along at early morning, he had become suddenly seized by a curious pain in the head, had become dazed, and fallen. More than that he did not know.
For nearly three weeks he remained indisposed; then of a sudden he grew quite well. But none knew that during the whole period he was secretly flinging away the doctor’s medicines and daily injecting a certain antidote into his arm.
The truth was that he had half recovered while lying in his laboratory, and had managed to get out, shut the door, and walk nearly half a mile before sudden exhaustion overtook him and he fell where he was found.
One warm night towards the end of June, when the whole village was asleep, he crept forth again down to the cottage, and there secured the little bottle sealed with black wax—the phial containing the rediscovered poison of the Doge Dandolo. Then, noticing that the rabbits in their cage were dead, he set to work to destroy all his apparatus, and bury it in a hole he dug in the wood a little distance from the house.
Afterwards he reascended to his presbytery, and just before dawn returned again to bed.
Three days later Don Mario left Santa Lucia to spend a few weeks at his imaginary home in the North, taking with him the Signor Inglese, while the young priest, Don Lippo, from the Abruzzi had taken up his temporary abode at the little white presbytery in the piazza.
Nearly six months went by.
In the dark November days in London—and the November of 1908 was exceptionally dull—two men were occupying furnished lodgings in a rather dingy, drab house in Walpole Street, off King’s Road, Chelsea. One was Don Mario, the other his friend, John Ambrose.
A few evenings before a serious contretemps had occurred, for Ambrose, while entering Sloane Square station, had been recognised by Medland, who, in surprise, had accosted him.
They had walked side by side for a long distance, right from where they met to Scotland Yard, whence the inspector invited him in, and then closely questioned him.
When he emerged an hour later Ambrose’s expression was unusual. Perhaps the detective’s questions had been disconcerting; but, in any case, his manner had entirely changed. He seemed to have aged fully ten years, for he retraced his steps to the underground station at Westminster, bent, serious, and very thoughtful.
Next day he returned to Scotland Yard—at Medland’s request, be it said—and was there interrogated by the Director of Criminal Investigations himself, while his friend the priest remained at home, as he always did during the day.
Of late the old priest had become silent and reserved, for he had been seized by certain suspicions regarding his friend Ambrose, and was calmly plotting a terrible vengeance.
One damp, foggy evening, about nine o’clock, Lady Ravenscourt and Mrs. Beresford, being out to dinner with an old lady in Brook Street, Maidee and Gordon were together in the drawing-room, happy in each other’s love.
The girl, in a pretty gown of palest pink chiffon, was seated at the piano, singing sweetly the old popular song, “Le Flâneur,” the light, cheery chorus of which ran:
Moi, je flâne;
Qu’on m’approuve ou me condamne!
Moi, je flâne,
Je vois tout,
Je suis partout.
Suddenly she was interrupted by the entrance of a maid, bearing a card.
She took it, rose from the piano, and for a second stood rigid.
“There are two gentlemen, miss—one is a clergyman, I think,” the girl said.
“A clergyman!” exclaimed Maidee, who, turning to Gordon, who had also risen and was standing beside her, added: “Uncle John has called! You will now have an opportunity of meeting him. Show the gentlemen up,” she added to the maid.
A few seconds later old Mr. Ambrose, well dressed and distinguished looking, entered the room.
“Why!” gasped Cunningham, staring at him aghast. “You, Tulloch! What does this mean?”
Maidee stood amazed as the two men faced each other.
“Yes,” replied Ambrose, “I am here to-night, Cunningham, to offer you an explanation; and this gentleman with me is Don Mario Mellini, who, like myself, knew your father very well.”
The priest, who had followed hat in hand, bowed low in his graceful Italian manner, expressing his great delight at meeting the son of an old friend.
“But, my dear Uncle John!” cried Maidee, “what does all this mean? Why did you pretend to Gordon to be Tulloch, an adventurer. You surely are not an adventurer!”
“Well, my child,” replied the old fellow, smiling upon her as he took her little hand, “I fear that the world would, if it knew the truth, condemn me as such. But I and my friend here have come to reveal to you certain curious facts, and to make one or two matters quite plain. Though it is much against my desire to disclose my real identity to your lover, yet I do so because I feel that I have acted wrongly—that I allowed my feelings of revenge to obtain the mastery. I regarded his father as one of my friends, yet, alas! he proved to be one of my worst enemies. Hence my brutal desire, first to raise his son to fame, and then slowly to crush him by blackmail and threats of exposure of a crime which I knew that he did not commit.”