CHAPTER XIX
My story until now has dragged a lingering length along, but from this point onward it moves swiftly to its close. In the haste I feel to reach that close I strive to obliterate from my mind whatever came between the hour of Hinge's revelation and the hour of the appointment. The task is not easy, for the four-and-twenty hours that intervened were filled with a suspense and anxiety of no common sort. The night passed, as even the most anxious of nights will pass; the day succeeding it crawled on, as even the dreariest of days will crawl; and at last the hour arrived. When, aided by Hinge on one side and by a stout walking-stick on the other, I left the hotel, the night was already dark, and once more a heavy rain was falling. Hinge had secured a vehicle, which carried us to within a hundred yards of our destination, and was there discharged. There was a lamp at either end of the brief lane in which the river-side cottage stood, and we could see that the road was diverted. There was still a chance that the traitors who were plotting against us might keep watch, and we slipped into the garden with some little trepidation. Once within the gate, I made a circuit of the house to assure myself that there was no chance of our being observed, and finding the whole field clear, I climbed, with Hinge's aid, onto the balcony. We had found the whole land in front of the house in darkness, and only a single room on the river-side was illuminated. Hinge touched me on the elbow, and with a forward finger indicated the lighted window, and motioned me on. I went crouching with a stealthy step until I came on a level with the window, and then, kneeling on the wet boards of the veranda, I found within eyeshot Brunow, the baroness, Sacovitch, and Constance Pleyel. The two men were smoking, wine was set out upon the table, and four glasses were filled. The whole party had an air of Bohemian ease and jollity. They were talking together, and I could see Sacovitch pacing the room with great vehemence of gesture; but though I could hear the deep murmur of his voice, and could even ascertain that he was speaking in English with a foreign accent, I could not succeed, strain my ears as I might, in making out the burden of a consecutive sentence. Hinge was crouching at my side, his shoulder touching mine. The rain dripped from the upper part of the house onto the shelving roof of the veranda with a monotonous and incessant noise which drowned the voices within at critical moments, so that we caught no more than detached words. All of a sudden I felt Hinge's hand on my wrist, and at that second a step crunched on the gravel between the gate and the door of the house. Then a bell tinkled faintly, and we both saw the whole quartet turn with varying expressions of waiting and attention. Then the door of the room opened and a servant appeared, explaining in dumb show, so far as we were concerned, but to our perfect understanding, that a visitor had arrived. I saw Brunow wave permission to the visitor to enter, and understood quite clearly what was going on, though at this moment the pattering of the rain and the sudden sigh of the wind robbed my ears of even the murmur of his voice. The servant retired, leaving the door open, and the quartet of conspirators bent towards each other while Sacovitch spoke. I watched the movement of his forefinger and the motion of his lips. The glint of his eye, the elevation of his brow, and the inclination of his head towards the open door all meant caution, and I could tell as clearly as if I had heard his words that he was taking upon himself the burden and responsibility of an approaching interview. An instant later the servant reappeared, laying a needless hand upon the door and swaying it open by a superfluous inch or two as he introduced the visitor.
“Roncivalli!” whispered Hinge, in a tone of unutterable amazement as the man came in.
I thought myself prepared for anything; but the presence of such a man in such company astonished me profoundly. Roncivalli was one of the most trusted of our committee, an Italian pur sang, a man whose family had suffered from Austrian misrule for half a century back. He represented a house which had been rich and noble, and had been persecuted into nothingness. No man had been louder in denunciation of the Austrian cruelty, no man apparently more sincere. There never lived a man who had more reason for sincerity. My first impression was that he must be spying upon the spies, for my opinion of his patriotism had been so lofty, that next to the Count Rossano and poor old Ruffiano, whom Brunow had betrayed, I should have counted him the last man in all the Italian ranks to be bought by Austrian gold.
He came in, hat in hand, with a sweeping salute to the ladies, and tossing his sombrero on the sofa, dripping wet as it was, unbuttoned with both hands a paletot shining with rain, and displayed himself in evening-dress, with a big jewel shining in the centre of his shirt-front, after a fashion which became popular a score of years later. Sacovitch stepped forward to help him divest himself of his cloak; and when it was slipped from his shoulders he held it with one hand, groping in the pockets from one side to the other, and in the meantime nodded round with a smiling air, with an allusion which I understood a second later when he held up a long Virginian cigar. Miss Pleyel and the baroness bowed, and Roncivalli set his cigar over the lamp until one end of it became incandescent. Then he began to smoke, and at a wave from Miss Pleyel's hand took an arm-chair close to the window. The baroness rose from her seat and poured out wine for him. Motions of hand and eye, change of feature, and movement of lip indicated an animated social converse, but not a word of it all reached my ears. I was just meditating on Hinge's luck in the fact that on the occasion of his watch the conspirators had thrown open the window as if on purpose that he should secure a hearing of their deliberations, when the baroness put her hand to her round white throat, with an exaggerated gesture of oppression, and then waved it towards the window. Sacovitch bowed and rose from his place. I laid a hand on Hinge, impelling him downward as the Austrian police spy walked towards the window. We each glued ourselves to the wall, and prostrated ourselves on the rainy wood-work of the veranda walk. We heard the grating sound of the window as it rose; and the mingled voices of the people inside—all five speaking together—came out with a gush, and brought such anticipatory joy and triumph to my heart as I had never felt before.
“Let us make sure,” said Roncivalli, in a laughing tone. “We have important business to discuss—at least, I am advised so—and it would be just as well to be certain that we are not overheard.” He raised the Venetian blind by the cord, and for a moment the rattle sounded as disturbing to the nerves as anything I can remember. But I heard Sacovitch say:
“The veranda looks upon the river. There is nobody within hearing.”
“We will see, in any case,” Roncivalli responded, and with that he thrust his head between the window-sill and the blind, and peeped out into the river. The lamplight took him from behind and illuminated the tips and edges of his hair, his beard, and his mustache, so that they shone bright gold, though he was a man of darkish complexion. As he turned his head sideways the white of his eye gleamed like an opal, and bending suddenly he looked downward, seeming to stare me in the face so intently that I did not even dare to breathe. I was so absolutely certain that he would give an alarm that it came upon me with a shock of relief beyond description when he drew his head back into the room, and said that everything was clear.
“That is a relief,” said the baroness; “but with all you gentlemen smoking, I was afraid that I should faint.”
“So?” said Sacovitch, with an altogether insolent disregard in his inquiry. “Let us get to business.”
“I am ready,” Roncivalli answered, throwing himself anew into the arm-chair.
“A moment,” said a voice, which I recognized as Constance Pleyel's; “it is very well to have the window open, but all the same we need not catch our death of cold. Will you be good enough, Signor Roncivalli, to lower the blind.”
The signor arose and obeyed her, and as he did so I could see his long figure between me and the whitewashed, lamplit ceiling of the room. Before another word was spoken Hinge touched me again upon the elbow, and I knew at once the meaning of his signal. We rose, both of us, silently to our knees, and each found a crevice through which he could command a view of the occupants of the room.
“The first thing, I take it,” said Sacovitch, “is to decide that the negotiations we are about to conclude are not likely to be broken by any betrayal on either side.”
“So far as I am concerned,” said Roncivalli, “my being here is guarantee enough. I am not risking my life for nothing, or, if I am, I shall know the reason why.”
At this moment Brunow broke in with an Italian-sounding phrase, and the baroness interrupted him.
“Speak English,” she said. “Herr Sacovitch has no Italian, and Miss Pleyel no German. English is the one language which is understood by all of us, and we may just as well have everything open and above-board.”
With one eye glued to the lower interstice of the Venetian blind, I saw the quintet all bowing and bobbing to each other at this with a Judas politeness which was altogether charming to look at. Roncivalli, with his back half turned towards me, was so near that I could have taken him by the hair. A little removed from him, on the right, sat the baroness, in a captivating little bonnet and gloves of pearl gray, smoothing one hand over the other on her silk-clad knees with a purring satisfaction in the charm of her own attire. At her side sat poor Constance Pleyel with a wineglass in her left hand, looking into its last spot or two as drearily as if she contemplated the dregs of her own wasted and weary life. Beyond her again, and almost facing me, just seen across Roncivalli's shoulders, sat Brunow, smoking at his ease, and toying with his eyeglass with the fingers of both hands. Sacovitch stood upright, his cigar balanced between his first and second fingers, dominating, or seeking to dominate, the whole party.
“I especially desire,” he said, in his strong German accent, and ticking off on his left forefinger every important syllable, with such emphasis that he scattered the ashes of his cigar into his own wineglass—“I especially desire that Signor Roncivalli should understand with extreme definiteness that there is no escape from the position which he has elected to assume.”
“No fear of me, my friend,” Roncivalli answered. The liquid Italian played against the German guttural like the warble of a flute answering the snarl of a violoncello. “I am doing what I know. Until our friend Rossano came to England I had a place from which he was good enough to depose me. You may say what you like, Herr Sacovitch, but the independence of my country is secure. Italy wins; and I desire Italy to win. I will help you to your Count Rossano if you want him, and if you will pay me for it, because I hate him, and because he is in my way. But Italy wins, all the same.”
There was a candor about this which I could appreciate, but Sacovitch turned upon his purchased traitor with something very like a snarl.
“Understand,” he said, in his thick German-English, “that I buy you or I do not buy you. Whether I buy you or not, you are sold already. Our last talk was overheard by a fellow-committeeman of yours, who is in my pay, and who will go back to his old patriotism, or come to me, exactly as I tell him.”
“I am here for a service,” responded Roncivalli “I will do one thing for you, as I have told you all along, and I will do no more. I will give you the Count Rossano, who is in my way, and I will not give you any real chance over Italy for anything you may offer me. I will take your money because I want it, and I will serve your turn because it suits me. How I reconcile these matters with my own conscience is my own affair.”
“Your conscience is your own,” Sacovitch answered; “the question of your conduct is our consideration. I want you only to understand that a single false move on either side—” He took a deep pull at his cigar there, and made a purposed pause for effect. “I think, ladies and gentlemen, you will agree with me that I do not exaggerate. Swerve an inch to right or left,” he added, “and you lose your life.”
Roncivalli's flute-like voice followed the troubled grumble of the German's threat.
“I know my business, Herr Sacovitch, as well as you know yours. I can serve your turn and I can serve my own. Give me what I ask, and you may have the Count Rossano. But if you think that in betraying the man who has usurped my place I betray my cause, you are very much mistaken. So long as Count Rossano is at liberty, it is not worth your while to trap so inconsiderable a person as myself. When once he is in your hands I shall be a great deal too wise to give you the chance of seizing me. When I fight, I shall fight openly—against Austria,” he added, with a laugh.
“Miss Rossano,” said Sacovitch, “drew the forty thousand pounds yesterday, and it now lies in the hands of Lady Rollinson. You will go to Southampton by the first train in the morning, accompanied by the Baroness Bonnar, who will introduce you to her English ladyship. Lady Rollinson is in direct communication with the Count Rossano, and will be able to give you a meeting-place at which you will hand over the money to the count. Mr. Brunow and the baroness will accompany you, and will undertake to see that the money is delivered. Any one of you may act as intermediaries between the Count Rossano and the forces on shore; but it must be definitely understood that the count is, under no circumstances, to be allowed to land until our own side is ready.”
“That is clear enough,” answered Roncivalli.
“Let me be clearer still,”—said Sacovitch, turning upon him with a menacing look. “In a case like this, many things have to be provided for. It is quite possible that it may seem worth your while to play for forty thousand pounds.”
“Not at all,” said Roncivalli, tranquilly.
“It is assuredly not worth your while,” the Austrian returned. “This enterprise is in my hands, and it has never been my practice to leave any of my agents unwatched. I shall not tell you who will watch you, or who in turn will watch him; but it will save possible trouble if you should understand that from the moment at which you leave, until the Count Rossano is in our hands, you will be under my observation and control as definitely as you are at this moment.”
“All this,” replied Roncivalli, “is a waste of words. I have undertaken this piece of work for my own purpose, and for my own purpose I shall carry it through. When the work is done I shall go my own way, as I have always told you. I am to have the pleasure of your society, madame,” he continued, turning to the baroness. “That is charming, and will beguile a journey which might otherwise be tedious. What is the hour of the train's departure?”
Sacovitch drew out a pocket-book, and, extracting a loose leaf from it, handed it to him.
“You will find all your instructions there: the train, the hotel at which Lady Rollinson is staying, and the boat. Mr. Brunow has my certificate to the captain of the boat, who will place himself at your service at any hour.”
“Buono!” said the Italian, folding the paper with a flourish, and bestowing it in his breast-pocket. “Is there anything more?”
“That is all,” said Sacovitch. “I think we understand each other, and we could do no more than that if we talked till midnight.”
“In that case,” said Roncivalli, rising, “until tomorrow, madame. Until to-morrow, Mr. Brunow.” He took up his paletot from the chair onto which he had thrown it on his entrance, and threw it over his shoulder. Then he took his hat, and with a half-theatrical bow all round, and a smile at Sacovitch, he left the room. The hall-door banged a few seconds later, and his footstep sounded on the gravel of the path and then died away.
“I am not quite sure that I trust that fellow,” Sacovitch said a minute later. “It will be your business to keep a strict eye upon him.”
“Have no fear,” said the baroness. “He shall be well watched.”
There was more talk, but it had no interest for me, though I still listened intently in the hope of learning more. In a quarter of an hour or thereabouts the servant was called in, and received instructions to bring the baroness's carriage, which appeared to be put up at a hotel while the conference was being held. She and Brunow and Constance were, it appeared, going back to town together, and I learned incidentally that the cottage had been rented by Sacovitch for his own purposes, as affording a more convenient and secret meeting-place than any he could find in London. Directly the servant had received his orders I gave Hinge a sign, and with infinite precautions we climbed from the veranda to the garden, and thence made our way on tip-toe, like a pair of thieves, to the roadway.
“They're a nice old lot, sir, ain't they?” said Hinge, when we had walked a hundred yards in silence.
I quieted him by returning no answer, and we walked on without another word until I had reached my own chamber. By this time I had quite made up my mind as to the line it was my duty to adopt, and wheresoever it led me I was resolved to follow. I gave Hinge my purse, and instructed him to pay the bill, to pack up my belongings, and to be ready to catch the first train into town. He was full of wonderment and conjecture, but, like the old soldier he was, he obeyed without inquiry. When I arrived at my own rooms I sat down and wrote a statement of the whole truth, as brief and concise as I could make it, and copied it four or five times over; and armed with these documents, I drove to the addresses of such men as I knew where to find among our sociétaires. Under ordinary circumstances, since the count's departure and the betrayal of poor old Ruffiano, I should have gone to Roncivalli; but now that he was turned traitor I had to rely upon my own limited information, which served me very awkwardly. I had calculated beforehand on the chance that I might not find any one of the men I sought at home, and my worst forebodings were fulfilled. I left in each case my written statement, and before I returned to my own rooms I had delivered them all. The unfortunate part of the business was, as I knew full well, that hardly a man among them could read English, and in almost every case the recipient of my letter would have to seek a translator before he could find me. I knew, on the other hand, that if once the statement I had made reached the intelligence of any one Italian patriot, the news would spread like wildfire, and that, if I needed them, a hundred men would be at my disposal to check the treason meditated by Roncivalli and Brunow. In each epistle I besought the receiver to follow me without delay to Southampton, and I undertook to wire to each the address at which I might be found, and begged him, in case he should follow immediately, to make arrangements to have that address rewired.
All this being done, I sat down and wrote out a fuller statement of the case for Violet's reading, if ever I should again be so happy as to find the chance of placing it in her hands. This occupied me until an hour after midnight. I went to bed, leaving with Hinge the responsibility of awaking me in time for the first train next morning to Southampton. When we reached the railway station I caught a glimpse of Roncivalli and Brunow and the baroness; but this was no more than I had expected, and it cost me but little trouble to evade them. We reached Southampton without adventure, and I kept my place in the railway carriage until Hinge reported to me that they had left the platform. Then I ventured after them in a fly, and having seen them all enter a hotel together, I made a note of its name and position in my mind, and took a little drive into the country before returning. When I got back and procured rooms, my heart leaped as I signed the visitors' book, for at the top of the page on which I wrote I saw the names of Lady Rollinson, Miss Rossano and maid. It cost me an effort to put the question with untroubled face and voice, but I asked the servant who conducted me to my room if Miss Rossano were still staying in the house. He answered uninterestedly that he did not know the lady. But when I mentioned her as Lady Rollinson's companion, he recalled her to mind.
“No, sir,” he said; “the lady stayed in the house the night before last, but she went away with her maid yesterday morning.”
As to when she would return, or as to the direction she had taken at the time of her departure, he could tell me nothing. And so, as fate would have it, I was left in the ignorance and uncertainty which had perplexed me from the first. A minute's interview with Violet would, of course, have put an end to the danger of the situation, but in her absence I felt as powerless here as I had been in London. I was on the scene of action, but so long as Lady Rollinson retained her absurd suspicions, I could not approach the actors and actresses in the scene of tragedy which grew every moment more threatening and more imminent.
Hinge was so far in my confidence already that I had not much difficulty in laying before him all my hopes and fears. I wrote an urgent note to Lady Rollinson, and sent it by his hand, instructing him to deliver it to her ladyship personally. I read it over to him when it was completed, and at the end of every sentence he nodded assent to it.
“Dear Lady Rollinson,” I wrote, “you have engaged to pay into the hands of Signor Roncivalli a sum of forty thousand pounds, to be handed to Count Rossano. Before you do this I beseech you solemnly to give me a moment's interview. The payment of that money will result in the count's betrayal to the Austrians. You know what he has suffered already, and you know how little mercy he can look for at their hands if they should once more succeed in getting hold of him. I beg you, for his sake, and for the sake of Violet, whom I know you love, to give me an interview of five minutes only. You may question the bearer of this note, who will tell you everything, and you may rely upon his knowledge and discretion. If you are still determined not to see me, I shall be quite content that you should learn the truth from him. But I beg you, by everything you hold dear, not to disregard my warning. Count Rossano is in peril of the gravest sort, and if you should hand Miss Ros-sano's gift to him without inquiry, you may sign his death-warrant, and will certainly give yourself grounds for the bitterest self-reproaches you have ever known.”
Hinge undertook, with a full sense of the responsibility which rested upon him, to deliver this letter, and went away with it; but in ten minutes he came back with the envelope unopened.
“I got to 'er ladyship,” he said; “but the minute I told 'er where I came from she threw the letter on the table and told me to bring it back again. I tried my best, sir, but she wouldn't listen to me. She ordered me out of the room, sir; and when I tried to tell 'er what the matter was, she rung the bell and walked out. You can't follow a lady into 'er bedroom, sir; and say what I would I couldn't get 'er to let me get a word in edgeways. A servant comes up in answer to the ring, and 'er ladyship, from inside 'er bedroom, says, 'Waiter, request that man to leave my room, and see as 'e don't trouble me no more.'”
“Where are Lady Rollinson's rooms?” I asked him, desperately.
“They're in this corridor, sir,” Hinge answered; “at the far end, numbers 38, 39, and 40.”
I snatched up the letter, strode along the corridor, and knocked at the middle door of the suite. Lady Rollinson herself answered my summons, and before I could speak a word slammed the door indignantly in my face and turned the key. I heard the bolt shoot in the lock, and a second later an angry peal at the bell sounded. I stood there, altogether irresolute and disconsolate. A waiter came flying up the stairs, and, bustling past me, knocked at the door.
“Who's there?” cried her ladyship's voice from within. “Send the manager to me. Tell him that I am being persecuted, and that I demand his protection.”
What was a man to do in a case of that kind? I could simply retire to my own apartments; but I did it in such a passion of wrath and impotence that I could have taken that stupid and credulous old woman by the shoulders and shaken her to reason. I was too angry and disheartened to speak a word; but while I was pacing up and down the room, and wondering what my next move should be, the manager of the hotel presented himself, with a message from Lady Rollinson.
“It is no affair of mine, sir,” said the man, who was extremely polite and business-like; “but the lady declares that she will not see you on any account, or receive any communication from you. I am to tell you that if you persist in attempting to see her she will leave the hotel. I can't afford to have my customers troubled in this way, and I must ask you to go.”
I told him I should decline to go. I asked him to sit down, and I related to him the whole story, so far as it was necessary that any outside person should hear it, in order that he might judge of the situation. The man became interested, and even in a way sympathetic.
“It's a very curious case; sir,” he admitted; “but I can't allow my customers to be disturbed, all the same. If I were in your place, sir,” he added, “I should appeal to the police.”
This advice was so hopelessly astray from the point that I dismissed the man, though I had to promise him that Lady Rollinson should suffer no further annoyance. Hinge was hard to pacify, for in his loyalty to me and the affection that had grown up between us, he was almost as much interested as I was, and he kept breaking in with a “Look 'ere, sir, this is Captain Fyffe, my master. It was him as rescued Count Rossano from the fortress of Itzia—you must have seen it in the papers.” The man was got rid of at last, and the promise was given. And now there was nothing to be done but to await the arrival of some one or two of the patriotic sociétaires from London. Even in the extremity at which things had arrived, I more than half dreaded their coming. If they came at all, they would come with a full knowledge of the facts, and their arrival meant nothing less than murder. It would have been the wildest of dreams to suppose for an instant that any one of them would allow his beloved chief to be handed over to the Austrians at any cost; and though I was willing to pay almost any price to save the count, I had a horror of bloodshed in a case like that.
“Let us leave no stone unturned,” I said to Hinge.
“I will go to the railway station to meet any friends of mine that may arrive, and in the meantime you can go to the docks and ascertain what vessels sail for any Italian port to-morrow. Find out if it is possible for me to get berths aboard the boat by which Brunow and Roncivalli sail.”
“You trust me, sir,” Hinge returned; “I'll do my best.”
We parted for an hour or so. My waiting at the station came to nothing, and when Hinge returned he had no news worth the telling. The regular liners were all known, and had been easy enough to find. He had learned by cunning inquiry that luggage had been taken that evening aboard a craft whose destination v was unknown, and he had had her pointed out to him. When he had pulled out into the harbor to speak the craft, he had been warned away by a man who either could not understand him or refused to do so. It was not in itself a suspicious or remarkable thing that a stranger should not have been allowed to board a foreign craft after dark, but in the circumstances it was enough to make me believe that this was the ship by which the traitorous party was to sail. To be so near, to know so much, and yet to be so helpless was downright maddening.
“Once the money is in the hands of those wretches,” I said, “once they are away, the count is doomed. That headstrong old woman is throwing away her niece's fortune to betray her niece's father; and if she knew what she was doing she would sooner put her own right hand in the fire.”
“If I was you, sir,” Hinge responded, “I shouldn't let her do it.”
“You wouldn't?” I responded.
“No, sir,” said Hinge; “I wouldn't.”
“And how would you prevent it?” I asked. I spoke eagerly, for I could not help thinking he had some scheme in mind.
“I don't know, sir,” said Hinge; “but I shouldn't let 'er do it. I'd rouse the town agen 'em. Do you mean to tell me, sir, as any set of English people 'ud let a lot of scoundrels like them go off to sell the life of an innocent gentleman? I don't believe it. I should rouse the town.”
I bade him hold his tongue and go, and for two or three hours I sat by myself, raging at my own helplessness. There is nothing so intolerable to an active mind as the sense of urgent duty confronted by impotence. And if ever circumstance in the whole history of the world yet justified a man, sane and sober, in a madman's act, I felt myself justified when the last desperate resort occurred to me.
CHAPTER XX
I said not a word; but I sat by myself, and I matured, I think, the maddest scheme that ever entered a sane man's head. Desperate diseases, as everybody knows, ask for desperate remedies, and here I do not know how it was possible for anybody to overestimate the urgency of the case. Count Rossano has gone peacefully to his rest now this many a year, but I had learned to love the man with a loyal affection and esteem, the like of which I never felt for any human creature, except my wife and my own children. It made for a good deal in my affection for him that I had been instrumental in rescuing him from that living death he had suffered for so many years, for I have found over and over again in my own experience that one of the surest ways of learning to love a man is to do him a good turn. And apart from my own affection for him, he was the very apple of Violet's eye, and my affection for her I have never been able to find words for. That her money should be employed to lure her father to destruction was a thing altogether hideous and intolerable; and when I hit upon the only method I could see to prevent so dreadful a consummation, I accepted my own madness with a tranquillity which has surprised me very often in remembering it. I thought it well, before starting on the enterprise I had in hand, to set down my purpose in writing, so that if it miscarried I might at least escape the mischief of misconstruction. So I sat down and wrote deliberately that it was my intention to rob Lady Rollinson of the sum of forty thousand pounds, intrusted to her by Miss Violet Rossano for transmission to her father. If I could have seen any other way out of it I would not have taken this; but I had searched everywhere in my own mind, and until this one extraordinary proposition disclosed itself I had been able to find no road at all. I set down in the document I wrote my purpose in this strange proceeding; I signed and sealed it in an envelope, and put it in my pocket. Then I waited until the house was quite silent, and the last waiter had shuffled along the corridor. It was one o'clock in the morning before I was satisfied that the whole house had sunk to slumber, and then I marched straight to the room in which Lady Rollinson had last decisively refused to grant me a moment's interview. I remember very well that there were three pairs of boots outside the door, that they were all new and neat and fashionable, and that I thought, as I looked at them, that in contrast with my own heavy and mud-stained footgear they looked marvellously small and delicate. I turned the handle of the door, and, to my surprise, it yielded. I found myself within a dimly-lighted room, where the main illumination was refracted in a ghostly fashion from the white ceiling, and came from the street-lamps in the square below. I closed the door behind me, and found that I had light enough to make my way about without difficulty. The room was furnished in hotel fashion, and at one wall of it stood a ghostly piano, its form revealed by mere hints of polish on its surface here and there. On the opposite side was an escritoire with writing implements, and a few scattered sheets of paper. In the centre of the room was a table, and two or three disordered chairs were scattered about the apartment. Faint as the light was, a cursory glance about the place made it evident to me that so large an amount of money as the sum I meant to steal was hardly likely to be there. There were two doors opening out of the room apart from the one by which I had entered, and I was compelled to trust to chance in my choice of the one to be next opened. I cannot in the least tell why, but I walked without hesitation to the one on my left. I tried the handle, and the door resisted me. I tried again more strenuously, and I heard a voice from the other side cry out in sleepy tones, asking who was there. I knew the voice for Lady Rollinson's.
I know very well that I am telling a queer story, but I must tell it plainly. I set my sound knee against that door and threw my whole weight with it, and in a second, with a horrible wrench at the injured wrist and ankle, I stood inside the room. A faint scream greeted me, and I saw a white figure in the act of scrambling upright in the bed.
“You will do well to be quiet,” I said, and the figure sank back with a sort of moan and gurgle of astonishment. My own nerves were so overstrung already that I discerned a comedy in a situation sufficiently serious, and if I had given way to the impulse which assailed me I should have broken into a shout of unreasoning laughter. This was only a surface current, however, and I was as conscious of the serious import of my business as I am now in recalling the incidents of that incredible adventure.
“Your ladyship,” I said, with that odd sense of comedy still uppermost, “will regard this as rather a curious intrusion. You have forty thousand pounds belonging to Miss Rossano, and I am here to rob you of it. I propose to do it with all delicacy; but if your ladyship will be good enough to understand me, I mean to have the money.”
That she heard me I am sure, but the sole answer I received came in the shape of a muffled scream from underneath the bedclothes.
“The money,” I said, “is Violet's property, and to her I shall be perfectly willing to account for it. You must tell me where it is, and I shall take it, and shall keep it until she comes to claim it.” I waited, and no answer came at all. I was bubbling with subdued laughter, and fully alive at the same time to the serious side of my own position. “Where is the money?” I asked, in a voice as stern as I could make it. “Tell me, and tell me without delay!”
The blinds of the room were drawn, and even that faint illumination which had guided my steps in the sitting-room was missing here. I could see nothing but the dull gray gleam of the white counterpane and the hangings of the bed.
“Tell me at once,” I said. “You may ask me for any explanation in the morning, and I will give it Where is the money?”
I waited, and a dead silence reigned. I repeated my question once, and twice, and thrice: “Where is the money?” Then I heard a muffled voice say: “Here!” I groped forward in the darkness until my hand encountered hers, and took from her grasp a chamois-leather bag, which was all crisp to the touch above and solid below.
“That will do,” I said. “You have forced me to do this. You can raise an alarm if you will; I am willing to defend myself, and I have taken the only step that was left me to save the life of Violet's father.”
With that I withdrew, stumbling here and there against the furniture in the thick darkness of the room. The sitting-room beyond seemed light by comparison, and the corridor, with its solitary sickly gleam of gas, was as clear as it would have been in broad daylight. I ran to my own room, and flung the bag upon the table. Then I untied the cord which bound it at the neck, and counted its contents. There were twenty notes of the Bank of England for one thousand pounds each, tied up in one little ladylike bundle with a bit of narrow pink silk ribbon. There were thirty-eight notes of five hundred pounds each, tied in the same delicate and feminine fashion. Then there were notes of one hundred and of fifty, to the value of seven hundred pounds. And at the bottom of the bag was a great loose handful of gold, all in bright sovereigns and half-sovereigns, fresh from the Mint. I estimated this little mass of coined gold at three hundred pounds; but just as I was in the act of counting it, the ring of a bell in violent motion tingled through the midnight silence of the house, and I paused. I heard a door thrown open, and an urgent voice at an incredible pitch shrieked, “Thieves!” “Murder!” Then the bell sounded again and yet again, until I heard it fall with a crash upon the stone floor of the corridor below. The wild voice, once loosed, went on shrieking, “Murder!” “Thieves!” I hurried the money I had stolen back into the bag, tied it as I had found it, and awaited the result with perfect equanimity. In less than half a minute doors were banging all over the house, and hurrying feet charged up-stairs and down-stairs. The voice of alarm never ceased for a moment. I stepped out into the corridor, and faced the manager, who was the first man to arrive upon the field.
“Lady Rollinson is alarmed,” I said; “you had better send some of your women to her. I have just robbed her of forty thousand pounds, and the money is in my room.”
The man glared at me with an expression of profound astonishment. Words were utterly beyond him, and he could only gasp at me.
“Tell Lady Rollinson,” I continued, “that the money is quite safe. I shall surrender it to Miss Rossano, to whom it belongs, but to no other person. Now go!”
The corridor by this time was full of half-clad people, who were staring in each other's faces with the bewilderment natural to startled sleep. I returned to my own room, closing the door behind me, and awaited the progress of events. I heard excited voices outside, but could make out nothing of their purport. Thirty or forty people made a very babel of noise outside my door; but by-and-by Hinge came in, wide-eyed, in a very short night-shirt.
“I have saved the count,” I said, very quietly. “There is the money which was to have betrayed him.”
“Good Lord, sir,” Hinge cried, “how did you get hold of it?”
“I stole it,” I responded; “it was the only thing to do.” While Hinge still stared at me in wordless amazement the outer door was flung open, and the manager appeared, ushering in a policeman.
“This is the man!” he cried.
“Yes,” I answered, “I have not the slightest doubt that I am the man you want. You are an officer of the police?” The man said “Yes,” bustling forward with a brace of handcuffs in his hand. “I claim this money,” I said, laying my hand upon the bag which rested on the table. “There need be no doubt about the matter, officer. I have become illegally possessed of this, but I claim it, and I shall surrender it only to the hands of your inspector. He will keep it until its rightful owner comes to receive it.”
“Lady Rollinson claims it!” cried the manager.
“Lady Rollinson,” I answered, “has no more right to it than I have. This money is the property of Miss Rossano. It must be handed to her, and I have taken it in order that it may be put into the hands of the legal authorities until such time as she appears to claim it.”
“I must trouble you to go with me, sir,” said the officer, advancing with the handcuffs in his hand.
“I will go with you,” I answered, “and I will go quite quietly on one condition: you will take charge of this.”
“You bet I will!” the officer answered, facetiously; and I saw a glance pass between him and the manager which said “madman,” as plainly as the spoken word itself.
I had done too much already to permit myself to be foiled at the end. I took the bag of money in both hands, and held out my wrists towards the officer.
“You will handcuff me,” I said, “if you think that necessary. I shall submit to anything which you conceive to be within the limits of your duty. But I shall not part with this until I meet your inspector.”
The man answered nothing, but he fettered me clumsily enough, keeping so wary an eye upon my face meanwhile that he manipulated the handcuffs without guidance, and pinched me in fixing them. I winced at this, and he got back from me as if he thought I was about to strike him.
“Ha! would ye?” he said, and laid a hand upon his truncheon. I stood still, with the handcuffs still dangling from my wrists, and the man, reassured by my manner, completed his task. The door was open, and any number of dishevelled heads and staring eyes crowded in at us.
“Let somebody find a cab,” I said. “Lady Rollinson is naturally a good deal disturbed, and will not wish to make a charge to-night. She can appear against me in the morning, and in the meantime we can see that the money is made safe.”
“Make no mistake about that,” said the officer. “We'll see that the money is kept safe. You hand that bag over to me; I'll take charge of that.”
“No,” I answered; “it goes into your inspector's hands. You can send for him, if you like, or you can take me to him.”
On a sudden I looked up, and there, among the faces at the door, I caught sight of Roncivalli and Brunow.
“Gentlemen,” I said, “I take you to witness why I have done this thing. Here is the money which was to have been handed to you to-morrow. I have told the Brotherhood. I spared you once,” I added, to Brunow; “you may go now and take your chance in earnest.”
Roncivalli was a man of daring, and had more than once given proofs of courage; but he turned white at my words, and Brunow shrank back in the crowd with a face all ghastly gray, with his teeth gleaming behind his trembling lips. Through all the hurry and bustle of the scene the hotel manager was vainly urging the startled occupants of the house to return to their own chambers. Then, with a sudden leap of the heart, I heard a voice outside:
“Be good enough to make way for me.”
“Come along!” cried the officer; “hand me that bag, and have done with it. I know my duty, and I've got force enough behind me.”
“Wait a moment,” I answered; “here is the owner of the money. Make way for Miss Rossano, and drive all those curious people away.”
I saw the crowd divide, and Violet came in, looking about her wonderingly. I stood there manacled, holding out the stolen money in my extended hands. She gave one swift glance of astonishment, and closed the door, leaving us alone, except for the officer and the hotel manager. Hinge, conscious of his dishabille, had retreated at the moment of her entrance.
“My aunt has been robbed, John,” she said, looking at me with wondering eyes— “robbed of forty thousand pounds!”
“And I,” I answered, “am the thief, and here is the money.”
“You the thief!” She fixed me with her eyes that have always seemed like stars of fate to me, and I saw a shadow of dreadful pain and wonder on her face. “You the thief!” she repeated.
“Yes,” I answered; “I stole this money from Lady Rollinson five minutes ago.” What with the certainty of triumph in my purpose, the surety of being immediately understood, and the joy of seeing her so unexpectedly again, I laughed outright. “I hand you back your own, dear. Take charge of it till you have heard my story. Sit down, and I will tell you everything.”
“Is this your property, mum?” the officer asked, setting both hands on the bag as I set it on the table.
“I believe so,” said Violet. “I gave the sum of forty thousand pounds into the charge of my aunt, Lady Rollinson, yesterday morning?”
“Then of course,” said the policeman, “you give the person in charge?”
Violet looked at me with dancing eyes, and never in all my life have I known such pride and joy as that glance afforded me. There I stood before her, taken red-handed in the act, handcuffed, and openly confessing with my own lips my own deed; but any doubt of me was impossible to her true heart. I sounded at that moment the superb loyalty of her nature, and my pride in her seemed to lift me into heaven.
“In charge?” she asked, with a little tender, mirthful tremor in her voice. “No, I shall not give the gentleman in charge. Tell me what it means, John.”
I told her first, briefly and rapidly, the story of poor old Ruffiano's betrayal, and how I had let Brunow go. Then I told her of Hinge's recognition of Sacovitch, of the meeting in Richmond Park, of what Hinge had heard at the cottage; and, finally, of what we had both heard together. I had called for Hinge at the very beginning of my narrative, and by the time I came to his share in it he was present, hastily muffled in an overcoat, and divided between a desire to stand immovably at attention and a contradictory attempt furtively to smooth his hair, which rayed out all round his head in disorderly spikes, and gave him a look of having been frightened out of his life.
“But why,” she asked me, “did you take such an extraordinary action? Why not communicate with me?”
Then I had to tell her the story of that wretched Constance, which would have been an awkward thing to do under any circumstances, but was made more awkward still by the presence of the hotel manager and the constable. I went through it, however, without flinching, and I told her most of what has been set down in the latter part of these pages, though of course with less detail than I have given here. She scarcely interrupted me by a word, and when I had done she drew her purse from her pocket, and taking from it a sovereign, tendered the coin to the constable.
“You have done your duty, officer,” she said. “But you understand that your services will not be required any longer.”
The constable took the coin and pouched it.
“Do I understand, mum,” he asked, with a droll stolidity, “that you're satisfied with the prisoner's story?”
“Yes,” returned Violet; “I am quite satisfied. You will not be wanted any more.”
The man took out a key from his pocket, and unlocked the handcuffs which confined my wrists. He said not a word, but looked at me in a mute admiration and wonder which spoke volumes. He and the hotel manager withdrew together, and I sent Hinge to bed.
“Suppose,” said Violet, “that I had been away, as you thought I was, you would have gone to prison.”
“Not for long,” I answered. “I should have told my story, and you would have believed it all the same.”
“I should have believed it all the same,” she said. “Do you know, John, I should think myself and the whole world all mad together rather than believe that you were not true and honest.” A second later she laughed and blushed divinely. “As if there were any need of saying that!” she cried, and then and there she gave me the first kiss I had not had to pray for.
She had endured the whole strange position until then with the pluck and steadfastness of a man, but there she broke down and cried a little, realizing all the perils which had beset her father, and his strange escape from it.
“We will take the money ourselves,” she said, when she had recovered from this natural emotion. “There shall be no further danger of the poor darling being trapped by those wicked Austrians if we can help it.”
And there I saw an inspiration, and hailed it with delight, and took immediate advantage of it.
“My darling,” I said, “we can't travel together by ourselves, and Lady Rollinson, I am afraid, is hardly likely to consent to be my fellow-traveller for some time to come.”
“I hadn't thought of that,” she answered. “Of course we can't travel together. But will you go alone, or shall I? I could take my maid, and I am used to travelling.”
“Let us go together, my dear,” I urged her. “Let us never be parted again. Let us give no more chances to well-meaning but foolish old ladies to divide us.”
She put me aside, and found a host of reasons; but though I am not strong in argument, I managed to combat and confute them all, and she said “Yes” at last. And so I not only turned burglar in her cause, but won my wife by it; for within five days we were married by special license.
Thus this queer story comes to an end, or, rather, like all the stories I have read and heard, glides off into a new one. Everybody knows the history of the last glorious war for Italian independence. I was in the thick of it, I thank Heaven, and so was the Count Rossano, and so was good old Hinge; and while we marched and fought, my dear Violet took her share; for there was no ministering hand in the camp hospitals more constant or more tender, no voice and face better loved and known than hers. We are old folks now, and have lived to prove each other as only married people can; but the greatest pride I have is that at this hour she is no more assured of the righteousness of my intent than she was at the instant when she found me with confession on my lips and every sign of guilt openly displayed about me.
Love is a great treasure. Truth and loyalty are among man's greatest possessions. But the truest solace to the human soul is perfect trust.
THE END
By DAVID CHRISTIE MURRAY.
Mr. Christie Murray is a kindly satirist who evidently delights in the analysis of character, and who deals shrewdly but gently with the frailties of our nature.... There is a spontaneity in his pen which is extremely fascinating.—Saturday Review, London.
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