The castaway

Nearing Casa Guiccioli, Gordon saw a crowd clustering a few paces from the entrance. Servants were watching from the balcony.

A couple of soldiers cocked their guns and would have hindered him, but he put them aside. On the pavement lay a man in uniform, shot through the breast. Over him bent a beardless adjutant feeling for a pulse, and a priest muttering a horrified prayer.

He asked a hurried question or two amid the confusion and dismay: The prostrate man was the military commandant of Ravenna. No one knew whence the shot had come a full twenty minutes before. Now his guard stood, with characteristic Italian helplessness, doing nothing, waiting orders from they knew not whom or where.

Gordon spoke authoritatively to the subaltern, bade one of the soldiers go for the police, despatched another with the news to the cardinal and directed two of the crowd to lift the injured man and carry him to his own quarters in the casa. This done he sent Fletcher for the surgeon who had attended his own wound in that same chamber, and stationed the remaining soldiers at the lower doors. When the room was cleared he gave his attention to the unconscious commandant.

He stood a moment looking fixedly at the bed. It was this man’s spies who had dogged him during the past month, persecuted his servants and attempted to raise the Ravennese against his very presence in the city. The government he served would have rejoiced to see him, Gordon, lying stretched there in the other’s place; would have given but lukewarm pursuit to the assassin. Yet the man before him lay helpless enough now. Presently the casa would be full of soldiers, dragoons, priests and all the human paraphernalia of autocratic authority. Who had fired the shot? And by what strange chance, almost at his own threshold?

He crossed the floor, unlocked a drawer and took out Count Gamba’s packet with satisfaction. His foot struck something on the floor.

He picked it up. It was a small leather letter-case—evidently fallen from the pocket of the wounded commandant. He took a step toward the bed, intending to replace it, and saw Tita at the door.

The latter wore no coat. He was sweaty and covered with dust. He beckoned Gordon into the next room.

“Excellence,” he asked huskily; “will you not open that portafogli?”

“Why?”

“Perhaps to know what he knew.”

“Why should I wish to know?”

“Because he was on his way here—to this casa, Excellence.”

Gordon saw that he was trembling, it seemed with both fatigue and repressed excitement. “Tell me what you know,” he said.

Tita spoke rapidly, his words tumbling one against another:

“I heard Paolo send your valet after you to-day, Excellence, when no one had come from the villa. It did not seem right. I watched from the garden. I could see some one in this room—it was locked when you went. I climbed a tree. The master and one other—”

“Trevanion!”

“—I could not tell. They were carrying in boxes. When they left the casa, I got through the window and broke them open. They held bullets and cans of powder.”

Gordon swept a swift glance around the room. He was beginning to understand. Ammunition, presumably for the use of the insurrectionists, here in his rooms—evidence of complicity with the Carbonari. A military search at the proper moment—expulsion from Italy! He distinguished the outlines clearly.

“Yes, yes,” he said; “go on.”

“I know the police have watched you. I guessed what it meant. I wanted to get the boxes away, but I could not—the servants would have seen me. I knew the soldiers would come soon. I climbed to the casa roof.”

The narrator had paused. The paper shook in Gordon’s hand. “No more, Tita!”

“It was the only way, Excellence!” said Tita, features working. “I swore on the Virgin to guard whatever came. The servants ran to the balcony when—it happened. The way was clear. I carried the boxes down to the garden. There is a covered well. They are there—where no one would look.”

Gordon was staring at the letter-case, his mind struggling between revolt at the act itself and a sense of its motive. So it was for him the shot had been fired! What a ghastly levity that the wounded man should now be lying here! He shuddered. Tita’s voice spoke again:

“Now, Excellence, will you read what may be in that portafogli?”

Gordon strode to the window and opened the case. It contained a single official letter. He unfolded and scanned it swiftly:

Gordon raised his eyes with a start. Teresa—to be shut from the face of the sun, from flowers, from gladness, for years, at least during the lifetime of her husband, perhaps forever? From him? Was this the fate he, cursed as he was, must bring upon her?

He felt his breath stop. What could he do? Take her away? How and where? “Her immediate conveyance”—“act without delay.” Those were no ambiguous words; they meant more than soon. If it should be to-day! If authority was on its way to her, even now, while he dallied here!

Tita saw the deathly pallor that overspread his face like a white wave. “What is it, Excellence?” he cried.

Gordon made no reply. He dashed the portafogli on the floor and rushed from the room.

His horse stood at the casa entrance. He pushed past the stolid sentinel, threw himself into the saddle, and lashed the animal to an anguish of speed toward the villa.