CHAPTER VIII
WHAT WAS IN THE STRONG ROOM
July 28th
With infinite care the chief of the Secret Police of Italy kept the actual details from the newspapers. As far as that was concerned, he carried out the wishes of the London police.
Before the burial of Madame Kennedy-Foster’s friend, two men, understood to be officials from Scotland Yard, arrived in haste in Florence, and identified him as the original of a photograph which they brought with them.
Yet to all Ansaldi’s questions they remained dumb. It was a matter, they said, upon which the authorities were preserving the most profound secrecy, and every inquiry failed to trace the whereabouts of my fugitive mistress. As far as could be ascertained she had never arrived in Trieste.
In Florence it was believed that Monsieur had committed suicide to avoid arrest, and the whole of the gossiping city was, of course, agog as to the reason the police had desired to arrest the English signore.
In the hotels and pensions the problem was eagerly discussed. Some shadow or other lay upon him, just as there are dark shadows over so many Englishmen who wander aimlessly up and down the Continent, and at last settle down in some spot where they believe they have found safety. If you are a cosmopolitan you have met many such.
The Chevalier made every effort to discover something regarding the murdered man and his friends. He interrogated me several times, but I really knew nothing tangible. Towards me the man now dead had always been most courteous. A hundred or so agents of police were busy making inquiry concerning the silent, inoffensive Englishman who, for the past six months, had been such a well-known figure in the Winter City, and my own curiosity having been keenly aroused, I found myself assisting. Indeed the Chevalier seemed to welcome my aid.
That Monsieur Cornforth had been murdered there was no shadow of doubt. Yet how did the assassin escape through that bolted steel door? Ansaldi at first inclined to the belief that he might have been mistaken that the door had been actually bolted when we commenced operations for its opening. Yet the foreman of the safe-makers, later on, showed me the mechanism, which proved beyond doubt that the huge bolts had actually been shot from within.
It was very unusual, he told me, to make a safe-door that would fasten on the inside, but in this case the deceased had been most particular on that point. Therefore it seemed as though he had constructed that strong-room in order to gain absolute silence and privacy.
As the days went past the chef du sûreté grew more and more puzzled. He had put aside all his other cases in order to solve this problem.
One afternoon he wrote inviting me to call at the Prefecture, as he had now again turned his attention to the movements of my mistress, Madame Kennedy-Foster.
After I had replied to all his questions, he suddenly said—
“Do you know, mam’zelle, that to-day I’ve been wondering,” he exclaimed at last, as he blew a cloud of smoke from his lips, “whether there is not something concealed within that strong-room!”
“But you’ve thoroughly examined it!” I exclaimed.
“Yes. But did not the Englishman build it with some distinct purpose? And that purpose we have not yet discovered.”
“Why not make another examination?” I suggested quickly. “I’ll help you. Let us go together.”
“Very well, mam’zelle,” he replied. “The place is still in our hands; there are two men there.”
It was, perhaps, unusual for him to allow a woman to assist in his investigations, yet he seemed to regard me as the link between the disappearance of my mistress and the mysterious murder of the lean Englishman. Yet Madame had left Florence two days before the murder.
So together we took a fiacre to the dark, square house lying behind the high brick wall—the house of mystery.
Entering the strong-room, the twisted door of which had now been forced back flush with the wall and stood wide open, we switched on the light and commenced an examination of the white enamelled walls, which, though they had the appearance of wood paneling, were in reality of steel.
The books in the long book-cases, which had already been moved away from the walls, were mostly volumes of light fiction, while the papers strewn about the writing-table were, in great part, geometrical designs and plans, which had no apparent meaning.
Upon the delicate grey carpet was the ugly brown stain—the stain of the life-blood of Madame’s mysterious friend.
With methodical perseverance, the chief of police was examining the wall, commencing from the door, and working slowly round.
Each ridge of the steel paneling, and each corner of a panel he pressed with his fingers and closely inspected, but could discover nothing.
He stood in the centre of the room utterly confounded. One of the men in whose charge the house was came forward, and said in Italian—
“We’ve thoroughly examined the walls, Signor Cavaliere. The people who constructed them have told us that there is no cupboard of any sort.”
But Ansaldi seemed unconvinced, and ordered the carpet to be taken up, when the solid steel-and-concrete floor was revealed. It was, they said, four feet in thickness to prevent tunneling.
This was examined, but gave no result.
The two men retired, and I was again left alone with the famous police official, who, taking one of the chairs, recommenced another careful tour of the white walls higher up than the area already inspected. There were several pictures suspended from the rails around the cornice, and these he, one after another, removed, until, of a sudden, he gave vent to a loud exclamation of surprise, which instantly took me to his side.
He was standing upon a chair, and behind one of the pictures I saw that a small oblong panel, about eighteen inches by ten, was movable. Though ingeniously concealed, it had evidently been constructed by Cornforth himself. The steel had been cut through, and a deep cavity chipped in the concrete wall, probably before it had had time to set quite solid.
The Chevalier, with a cry of triumph, plunged his hand within, and drew out something.
“Madonna mia!” he cried. “What is this?”
Mon Dieu! Opening his hand he displayed to my astonished gaze a miscellaneous collection of unset gems—diamonds, rubies and emeralds—stones of great value, all of them.
“Ma foi! they’re worth thousands of pounds!” I cried. “Are there any more?”
Handing them to me, he got a table, placed the chair upon it, and then, his head on a level with the cavity, he drew out two or three further handfuls of the secret hoard. Très curieux!
“Now, this is decidedly strange!” he declared, when he got down and rejoined me, examining the jewels with a critical eye. “All these have been taken from their settings. This”—and he took up a fine ruby between his finger and thumb—“this alone must surely be worth over fifty thousand francs! Is it possible, I wonder, that the victim was a jewel-thief? He certainly was not an international thief, or I should have recognised him.”
“Robbery was not the motive of the murder,” I remarked.
“Ah! we do not know, mam’zelle,” he replied. “The assassin might have intended to possess himself of these, but, like ourselves, hunted, and had a difficulty in finding them! If Cornforth were a thief, or a receiver, depend upon it that one of his accomplices was his murderer.”
“The assassin who passed out in the guise of an old woman—eh?”
“Most probably,” he replied, bending and examining one by one each of that magnificent collection of stones.
“And as regards that secret report made by the neighbouring caretaker, do you believe, m’sieur, that this same old woman who paid him the mysterious visits was actually the assassin?”
“No,” replied the great detective, closing his lips with a snap. “The old woman—your mistress probably—most likely brought the spoils here. She may have conveyed them from France or Germany, or even England. You told me that Madame Kennedy-Foster was in the habit of travelling a great deal. Being an ill-dressed old lady, she could travel third-class, and thus smuggle them across the frontier. The officers of Customs would not suspect such a person of carrying diamonds. Look at this stone!” he exclaimed, a second later. “Why, it is fit to adorn a king’s crown!” and he held up a magnificent diamond to the light, causing it to scintillate and flash with a thousand fires. “Yes,” he added; “we are no doubt in possession of William Cornforth’s secret at last. My own theory is that he was well-known in England as either a jewel-thief or receiver, and that the police wished to arrest him in secret in order to compel him to disgorge certain of these jewels—gems stolen from some exalted personage, perhaps. Then, when news of his assassination was announced, the authorities hastened to hush up the affair, feeling that with his death their opportunity had passed away.”
“Yes,” I said. “But the question of how the assassin escaped from this room still remains, m’sieur.”
“Unfortunately, yes,” was the great man’s response, his keen, dark eyes wandering around the cyclopean walls of the close, ill-ventilated chamber. “I confess, mam’zelle, that it is the most complete mystery that has ever been presented to me in all my long career as a police official.”
And the man who was ubiquitous, who was renowned in every European country for his marvellous success in the detection of crime, and whom the Camorra, the Mafia, and the other dangerous secret societies of Italy had in vain endeavoured to kill, took a cigarette from his case and lit it.
“I cannot understand the attitude of my own Government in regard to the deceased,” he said, speaking very slowly to himself, looking at me with his dark, piercing eyes. “Only yesterday I had a long conversation with the Minister of Justice himself over the telephone, and, strangely enough, His Excellency, who was in Rome, urged me to drop the whole matter in the interests of the nation. Naturally I inquired the reason. But, in reply, he explained that only the day before, during an audience of his Majesty at the Quirinal, the King had expressed his desire that the matter should be hushed up.”
“The King has actually said this!” I gasped, staring at him. “For what reason can his Majesty possibly desire the concealment of the guilt of a mere receiver of stolen property—as this man undoubtedly must have been? It is inexplicable!”
“Yes, my dear mam’zelle,” declared the world-renowned detective—the man whose power in the Italian kingdom was almost despotic. “It is just as inexplicable as the reason of your mistress’s sudden disappearance, and as the manner in which William Cornforth met with his death. I tell you frankly, I believe there is far more in this strange affair than we have ever dreamed!” Nobody came forward to claim the secret hoard of jewels.
As far as the police were aware, they were the actual property of the dead man Cornforth.
Monsieur Walker, the British Consul, requested them to be sealed up, and placed in the bank, pending inquiries regarding the dead man’s heirs. When a British subject dies abroad it is the Consul’s duty to see that his property remains untouched until his friends or executors are communicated with. Hence Monsieur Walker was perfectly within his right to make such application.
By no effort could the Chevalier gain any further knowledge of the antecedents of the murdered man, save that he had lived for some time at Brighton. He sent one of the agents of secret police in London down to Brighton, but their inquiries proved abortive. Monsieur Cornforth had occupied for a year a large comfortable house in Brunswick Square, Hove, and had lived there alone, save for an old woman who acted as housekeeper, and one maid-of-all-work. He had made no friends, and his neighbours had consequently regarded him with considerable suspicion.
Why had Scotland Yard so suddenly been seized with a desire to arrest the quiet, unobtrusive Anglais?
The blazing Tuscan summer grew hotter, the crowd of English who spend the early months of the year in Florence, and les touristes who wander through the galleries, or idle along the Lung Arno, had long ago disappeared; the Florentines themselves were in the mountains for fresh air, and the busy, noisy main streets were now deserted, even at mid-day. Vraiment, in August, every one who can possibly escape the sweltering heat and mosquitoes of the Arno valley, does so.
I still remained, however, in my modest pension, for I had been re-engaged for next season by a German lady who had a great villa out at Fiesole.
One evening, an hour before dinner, as I sat idling over my three-day-old Matin, which had just come in, the chief of police was suddenly ushered into the room.
I saw by the sharpness of Monsieur’s countenance that something unusual perturbed him. Usually his expression was sphinx-like, save when he interrogated a prisoner, when it became full of fire and indignation, or sympathy and sorrow.
I rose to greet him, whereupon he placed his soft, grey felt hat upon the table and said—
“Mam’zelle Le Bas, I come to you because—well, to tell the truth, there is yet another mystery at the Villa Borelli!”
“Dieu! Another mystery!” I gasped, open-mouthed.
“Yes,” he replied. “As you know, we have taken possession of the place and its contents until the Consul’s inquiries are completed. Two of my men, named Merli and Bruno, have ever since the tragedy been posted there, taking twelve-hour turns. I have wondered whether the assassin might not return in secret one day to search for those hidden gems, and for that reason I have had strict observation kept there. At ten o’clock last night Merli left the house when his comrade Bruno arrived, and returning to his home did not go back to the villa till five o’clock to-day—it being his long spell of absence. On arrival, he could obtain no answer to his ring at the back door, and finding the place securely closed he therefore effected an entry through a window, and what did he find? Why, he discovered his comrade, Carlo Bruno, one of the astutest agents of the mobile brigade, lying shot dead in the strong-room wherein we discovered the Englishman!”
“Another assassination!” I cried. “Incroyable!”
“Yes,” said Monsieur. “Come with me, if you like, and I will show you.”
So I put on my hat and veil, and together we hastened up the hill in the sunset to the house of silence.
Figurez-vous when I crossed the threshold of the place a queer, uncanny feeling of apprehension and dread ran through me, even though I was accompanied by the man whose very proximity struck terror into the heart of the boldest and most hardened Italian criminal.
The man, Merli, who admitted us, looked pale and scared, even though he was an agent of police, while a comrade, who had been summoned by telephone, stood by in silence, and saluted his chief officer respectfully.
Not a word was exchanged.
I followed my conductor along the wide marble hall, and into the strong-room where the electric light still burned. There upon the concrete floor—the carpet having been removed—and in the same crouched position in which he had been discovered by his comrade, lay the body of the detective Bruno, shot through the heart. The ugly wound was revealed in the full light, and as I bent I saw there his grey linen vest had been singed.
“See! The shot was fired at close proximity!” declared the chief of the detective service. “Just as it was fired when Cornforth fell.”
“En effet, there is no suggestion of suicide?” I asked.
“None. The murderer’s revolver is missing. See!” and he took the dead man’s big serviceable weapon from the case suspended around his waist. “This is still loaded in all chambers. He was attacked quite suddenly by some one lurking here, and had no time to fire a shot. Probably the electric light was not switched on when the shot was fired. The assassin turned on the light afterwards.”
“And the place was all locked up securely?” I remarked in wonder.
“Yes. But the murderer could, of course, have left by the front door, which closes with a spring latch. The crime must have been committed six or eight hours ago—before noon.”
The same fussy little doctor, who was summoned on the discovery of the body of the mysterious Englishman, was called, and declared, without hesitation, that, as in the first case, the shot could not have been self-inflicted. The bullet had, as in poor Cornforth’s case, passed clean through the unfortunate man’s body.
En vérité, the problem was beyond solution.
The only theory which the chief of police could form was that the assassin of William Cornforth had returned in secret to institute another search for the gems, and encountering the detective Bruno, had crept up in the darkness of the strong-room and shot him.
But how did he enter? Perhaps he was possessed of a latch-key—the latch-key given to that queer old woman—the woman suspected to have been my late mistress—who had been Cornforth’s midnight visitor!
We stood gazing around that dead white chamber of death in absolute wonder and blank amazement. The double crime was beyond human credence. Even the great Luigi Ansaldi himself declared himself entirely baffled.
“It is utterly inexplicable,” he said. “The assassin must have come here twice with the object of committing robbery, and on each occasion he committed murder!”
“But how did he get away on the first occasion?” I queried.
To which the great chief could only shrug his shoulders in expressive ignorance. I think my lack of knowledge had long ago disappointed him.
Once again the whole machinery of the police of Italy was set in motion in order to try to trace the unseen assassin. Some one was evidently aware of the great value of the gems which Cornforth had in his possession, and they evidently suspected them to be secreted in that strong-room. If the Englishman had brought them to Florence he would naturally have kept them in the strongest place in the house. Yet, why had he built that impregnable chamber when, after all, they would have been just as well concealed beneath one of the floor-boards, or in a crevice in a wall? Safes and strong-rooms in private houses are an invitation to burglars.
Several suspicious-looking persons were reported as having been seen in the vicinity on the morning of the crime, but on investigation each clue turned out to be a false one. The assassin of William Cornforth and Carlo Bruno was evidently a person who knew the truth concerning the former, and had intended to wrest from him his great wealth. The gems had been valued by Cravanzola, the well-known jeweller in the Corso at Rome, at fifty thousand pounds.
In England the Foreign Office were advertising for Monsieur Cornforth’s friends or heirs, but nobody came forward to lay claim to any of the property. Apparently the mysterious Englishman, who had led such a retired life at Brighton, was a man without any relative.
In many newspapers, including the Florence daily press, the same advertisement appeared, but no serious reply was received. The mystery concerning the lean Anglais and his past was complete.
The Chevalier left no stone unturned to effect a solution of the mystery. He summoned his best agents from Rome and Milan, and held counsel with them, and he himself travelled hither and thither up and down Italy following various clues. But all to no purpose.
The Villa Borelli was strongly guarded by police, for crowds were around it by day and night. The facts concerning Bruno’s mysterious assassination had leaked out, and the greatest sensation was caused. All sorts of wild theories were afloat, many of the superstitious declaring that evil fell upon all who ventured there.
The sudden illness of my sister Jeanne, who was in the service of Madame de Champfleur, wife of a diplomat now attached to the French Embassy in London, took me on a flying visit to England, and Monsieur de Champfleur, having heard of the strange story, one day took me to Scotland Yard, where I saw Chief-Inspector Stephens. Sitting with him in his room I referred to the mysterious case of William Cornforth, whereupon he bent towards me with quick interest, saying: “Oh! then you knew him in Florence—eh, miss? Well, what did you think of him?”
“Quite a nice gentleman,” I replied. “I saw him several times. It caused a great sensation in Florence when it was known that you wanted him.”
The detective smiled mysteriously.
“Yes,” he said reflectively. “I expect it did. But, tell me, what was your opinion of him? Did he strike you as at all an extraordinary man?”
“Mais non! He loved a good joke, I think, as he did a good dinner. His end was most tragic and extraordinary.”
“So it appeared. But was nothing stolen from that room wherein he was found? The Italian police furnished us with all the details and photographs, of course, and the case has puzzled us just as much as it must have puzzled them.”
“Nothing whatever was stolen. The jewels he had concealed are in the bank awaiting any claimants. You believe, with the Chevalier Ansaldi, that robbery must have been the motive of the crime.” Then I asked, “For what reason did you apply for his arrest? What was the charge against him?”
“Ah! That I’m unable to tell you, miss,” was the inspector’s instant reply. “It was a mysterious and serious charge, without a doubt.”
“Pardon, but can’t you tell me in confidence? Poor Monsieur is dead now. Surely there is no harm in an explanation.”
“No. The matter is a confidential one,” was his reply. “Even we here were not told the charge. Our orders came from over the way—from the Home Secretary himself.”
“From the Home Secretary!” I ejaculated. “Rather unusual, is it not?”
“Most unusual,” he admitted, twisting his dark moustache and looking across the table first at me and then at Monsieur de Champfleur. “But you must nevertheless remember that that man whom your mistress entertained at her house, and who met with such a mysterious end, was one of the most dangerous men who ever walked the London streets.”
“But that doesn’t explain why the Home Secretary should apply for his arrest and extradition,” said my companion, much puzzled.
“But I think it does.”
“Why?”
“Well—because we wanted to keep him safe, under lock and key,” he replied hesitatingly.
“I don’t quite follow Monsieur,” I remarked. “The Italian police are very sore that your Department have not furnished them with the charges laid against the dead man.”
“What was the good after he had died?” asked the detective.
“Eh bien! It seems to me, Monsieur, that you here at Scotland Yard were secretly glad when you heard of his tragic end.”
“I must admit that we were not sorry,” Stephens replied. “It saved a great deal of distasteful explanation.”
“Distasteful! Pourquoi?”
“Because the Home Office were most anxious that the real truth should not go forth to the public.”
“Why?”
“Well, because if what I suspect be correct, the real truth concerning the mysterious Englishman would have created the greatest alarm. The whole country would have been terrified at the thought of such a man being at liberty in their midst.”
“Diable! Was he such a monster, then?”
“Monster does not adequately describe him. He was criminal by instinct—the most formidable, terrible, and relentless of any recorded in the annals of crime. Is it any wonder, miss, that we were not sorry at receiving the news of his mysterious death?”
“He surely could not have gained early knowledge of the order to arrest him?” I queried.
“He may have done. He was such a remarkable person that I could imagine him capable of taking every precaution against surprise. Yet I confess, the manner in which he was assassinated is, to me, a complete enigma, as it is to the Chevalier Ansaldi. No doubt somebody knew of those jewels, and intended to get hold of them. The same hand that shot Cornforth also shot the policeman—I feel certain of that. To tell the truth, I’m sorry I’m not in Florence to assist in the inquiries. It is certainly a most interesting case.”
Enfin, I pressed him to tell me more about Monsieur Cornforth, but he only repeated that he was a most remarkable man, whose death was a distinct advantage to civilised society.
Inspector Stephens declared that nobody there at Scotland Yard knew the exact charges against him. The order from the Home Office to the Commissioner of Police had been brief and decisive, namely, that the Italian authorities were to be approached with a view to Cornforth’s immediate arrest, and that no money was to be spared in bringing him to England at as early a date as possible. Stephens himself had been dispatched to Florence, and had got as far as Basle when he was stopped by telegram, the report of the “wanted” man’s death having reached London.
“I suppose, miss,” he added, “that the Chevalier Ansaldi holds some theory of how the assassin got out of the strong-room, eh?”
“The chef du sûreté has no theory,” I replied. “What explanation can there be? I saw with my own eyes that the great steel door was bolted on the inside. Therefore how could the assailant have escaped?”
The inspector only raised his dark eyebrows. “It is an absolute enigma,” he admitted, “an enigma as complete as was the dead man himself.”
“You kept the whole affair very cleverly from the press,” I said.
“Certainly. We had no intention of alarming the public unduly—and I repeat, they would have been greatly alarmed had they but the slightest suspicion of the extraordinary truth.”
“Monsieur excites my curiosity,” I exclaimed, laughing.
“Well, I’m sorry, miss,” he replied, with a slight sigh; “sorry, too, I can’t satisfy your curiosity. But, as you know, here we are compelled to keep secrets strictly—more especially if the secrets come to us through official sources.”
I mentioned the suspicion of the old lady, who visited the house clandestinely—the woman suspected to have been my mistress, Madame Kennedy-Foster.
His lips were pressed closely together, and for a few moments he remained silent.
“It may be, of course,” he said, “that the woman brought him the gems in secret, but I am inclined to believe that she was the means by which he communicated with other persons, believing he himself was being watched.”
“Then those other persons would, in all probability, know something concerning him?” I exclaimed quickly.
“Of course they would.”
“Voilà! Cannot they be found?”
“It is for the Chevalier to find them, miss. He is astute. He will probably do so. Yet, even then, it will be to their own interests to remain silent.”
“The old woman was seen to pay midnight visits to the villa,” I remarked. “She may have been my mistress.”
“Which goes to prove the soundness of my theory,” he said, looking me straight in the face. “It is a pity we cannot find this Mrs. Kennedy-Foster.”
“But the jewels?” I asked. “Are they the proceeds of robberies?”
“Perhaps. I can tell you that William Cornforth was no ordinary criminal. His equal has never lived.”
“Eh bien! And why would the truth concerning him be so alarming to the public?”
“For several reasons. So remarkable a personage was he, that while he lived society lay at his mercy. His methods were so subtle, unscrupulous and unsuspected that the cleverest among us would find ourselves at fault. The world has had many famous criminals, and not a few have passed through our department here,” added the police official, “but the man who was a menace to his fellows, and whose daring and cunning were unequalled, was he who escaped us and went to live in Florence as William Cornforth!”