CHAPTER X
CONTAINS SOME REVELATIONS
December 22nd
In November I went back to Italy, to enter the service of the German lady named Staben, at Fiesole.
I saw the Chevalier, and told him of my visit to Scotland Yard, though I said nothing of what Flugel or Mademoiselle Cornforth had told me. I had given a pledge of secrecy, and, though much against my inclination, I felt in honour bound to keep it.
Twice we met accidentally, and our conversation drifted to the mystery of the Villa Borelli. He always declared it to be inscrutable.
Whenever I passed that silent, deserted villa, which was now to let, my mind wandered back to that most inexplicable mystery. Nobody would rent the place because of the tragedy that had occurred there, and through the past summer the once well-kept garden had been allowed to become overgrown by a tangle of weeds. Its grimness and neglect often caused a shudder to run through me as I went by.
Hélas! Before my eyes at such times would rise the pale, sweet countenance of the daughter of the murdered man.
One evening in mid-December I received a note asking me whether I could obtain leave and run round to the Prefecture of Police.
“I want to tell you something, mam’zelle,” the Chevalier said, when I entered his bureau, “something which will interest you greatly, I believe. What do you think? We have made an arrest in connection with the affair of the Villa Borelli!”
“Tonnerre de Dieu! An arrest!” I gasped.
“Yes; and moreover I feel sure the suspect can tell us something—something we do not dream. I would like you to give your opinion,” and he touched the electric button on his table.
Upon the threshold a detective appeared instantly.
“Bring in the prisoner you’ve just taken away,” commanded the official. “I’ve forgotten a question.”
Then, when the door had closed, he leaned back lazily in his chair, explaining that, just after five o’clock on the previous night a man passing the deserted villa thought he saw the flicker of a light in one of the upper windows visible from the road, and informed a policeman on duty at the Porta Romana. Assistance was obtained, and the villa searched, when, to the horror of the searchers, they found in the strong-room—that fatal chamber—an elderly man lying dead—shot through the back!
“Dieu! A third victim!” I cried, taken aback.
“Yes. At first the men searching were too surprised to think of anything else, when one of them heard a movement in the darkness, and turning on his lantern there was revealed the presence of a second person, whom they promptly arrested and brought here. I was out at the time, and only came in half-an-hour ago. Then I sent word to you——”
The door reopened, and, glancing behind me, I saw two police officers in uniform, who had between them a pale, trembling woman.
In an instant the recognition was mutual. It was Mademoiselle Cornforth!
“You!” she gasped, staring at me. “You—mademoiselle!”
And then she rushed across to greet me, crying—
“Help me! help me, mademoiselle—I beg of you! I was foolish to go there—yet I was seized by curiosity to see the room wherein my father had been struck down.”
“Your father!” exclaimed the Chevalier, looking at me in surprise. “What does this mean, mam’zelle?”
I was silent. What could I say?
“I went with Mr. Flugel—at his request. We went there in secret, because he wanted particularly to examine my father’s study—the strong-room wherein he died,” the girl explained. “We entered the place through a window, and Mr. Flugel, after exploring the ground-floor, found the room. I looked around it and then ascended to the next floor, to see what the rooms were like above. When I returned, to my horror I found my companion lying upon the floor shot. Yet I had heard no sound, though, being up-stairs and the swing-doors in the hall closed, perhaps I had not noticed it.”
“But why were you there, signorina?” asked the Chevalier, looking at her very seriously. This third mystery had, I saw, entirely upset him. There was something weird and uncanny about the Villa Borelli which even he, fearless as he was of assassins’ knives or bullets, held in dread.
“I must refuse to say,” was her prompt reply in English, for she only spoke a few words of Italian.
“Then I fear I must detain you until you are in a better mood,” he said politely. “Are you not aware that we have been advertising in various parts of the world to find you?”
“I know it, but I had no wish to come forward.”
“Why?”
“For reasons of my own.”
The famous official was silent for a few moments, thinking deeply.
“Well, signorina,” he said at last, “perhaps you, who are in possession of some exclusive knowledge, will give me your theory regarding this assassination of your companion. Who was he?”
“My father’s most intimate friend.”
“And who would have an incentive to assassinate him?”
“Nobody, as far as I know. He had no enemies. But,” she added, “may I be permitted to ask you a question in return? When my poor father was found, did the doctor say that the bullet had penetrated him?”
“Certainly. It had gone clean through his body.”
“And the bullet was found in the room?”
“No. Curiously enough, though we plainly discerned a dark mark upon the white enamelled steel where the projectile had evidently struck, yet the bullet itself was not found,” was the answer of the Chief of Police.
“Ah!” she exclaimed, “I thought as much! The mystery was increased because no weapon and no projectile could be discovered—eh?”
“Exactly.”
“Then Mr. Flugel must have died in the same manner as my father and the police agent,” she said reflectively.
A pause ensued, broken only by the slow pacing of the police sentry outside in the dark courtyard.
“Why don’t you tell the Chevalier what you know, mademoiselle?” I urged. “Do not remain in this position. I feel sure the Chevalier Ansaldi will respect your confidence if there is any information you do not wish transferred to England. The Italian police have no great love for Scotland Yard.”
“Mademoiselle speaks the truth, signorina,” asserted the Chevalier. “Any fact you reveal to me I shall regard in strictest confidence.”
But she again remained silent.
“Tell me,” I urged, “how did Flugel know of my knowledge of your father?”
“My father wrote and told him. He feared that Madame Kennedy-Foster had discovered his secret, owing to some words she let drop while discussing with him a certain scientific subject. So he wrote to Flugel for his advice. And the latter—well, I know he urged that both Madame and yourself should be silenced—killed,” she said.
“Killed!” I gasped. “Bon Dieu! Why should I be murdered?”
“In order to protect my father’s secret.”
“Tiens! What was his secret?” I demanded breathlessly, my curiosity now aroused to breaking-point.
She hesitated. Then she said—
“If you reveal it to the London police, I shall be arrested as the only person living besides themselves who is in possession of it. They intend that it shall be repressed at all hazard.”
“C’est entendu. But what is it?” I again demanded.
“If you tell us, I promise to regard your confession as absolutely sacred,” the Chevalier assured her, while I, on my part, repeated my promise of strict secrecy.
“Well,” she said very reluctantly at last, after a great struggle with herself. “Perhaps I should only be doing right if I revealed it, and prevented any further development of the mystery. Will you take me back to the Villa Borelli?”
“Most certainly,” cried Ansaldi eagerly, and in a few minutes his own motor-car was outside awaiting us, while three agents of police were ordered to follow in another car.
Through the ill-lit streets of the old-world city we tore, awakening the echoes, until presently we drew up outside the iron gate of the House of Death.
We all three entered, and were there met by two police officers, who had re-taken possession of the fateful premises.
There I saw the dead body of Flugel lying in the salle-à-manger covered with a table-cloth, but as we entered the strong-room a loud cry of horror from the girl caused us to halt.
“Have a care!” she shrieked. “Do not enter there before me.” Then, going in alone, she stood for a second against the door-way, looking around the weird apartment. Afterwards she moved slowly to the electric-light switches beside the door and manipulated them. The lights were switched off one by one, and then on again.
“Now,” she said, “you can come forward in safety.”
We advanced, both much surprised at her action, when, turning suddenly, she asked—
“Have you examined that wall yonder?” and she pointed to the left-hand side of the room, near the writing-table.
The Chevalier replied that he had thoroughly examined it.
“Well, I would make a further examination,” she suggested. “Have some chisels brought, and see if there is not another cavity behind that steel paneling.”
This was eventually done. We standing by in wonder, when of a sudden, one of the men working gave vent to an ejaculation of surprise, for behind a piece of the steel panel that was found movable, though it fitted most exactly, was revealed a large electric battery.
With a will the men worked when, to our amazement, we realised that behind that wall were whole rows of electric batteries fully charged, and all connected up, capable of developing an enormous current, in addition to that from the electric-light installation, which could be turned on by one of the light-switches.
“What does this mean?” Ansaldi inquired of the dead man’s daughter.
“Remain patient, and see,” was her response.
Evidemment the wall was in sections, with the steel panels removable, allowing the batteries to be charged or taken out for cleaning. Yet the whole thing was so carefully concealed that on the previous occasion when the walls had been examined nothing suspicious had been discovered.
One of the men, who had borrowed a pick-axe and was working with all his might upon a panel which sounded hollow, succeeded in wrenching it open, and as he did so his implement, twisting inward, broke up some delicate glass, a quantity of which also fell out upon the concrete floor and broke.
“Ah!” shrieked the girl, “Have a care! For Heaven’s sake have a care! See what has been done!” and she bent to carefully pick up some fragments of glass vacuum tube, while at the same moment I saw, remaining in the hole in the wall now disclosed, part of a curious-looking apparatus, evidently in connection with those rows upon rows of strong batteries.
“See!” cried the girl, in deepest distress. “It is broken—irretrievably broken! The irresistible power has gone for ever, and the only man who knew the complete secret of its construction is dead!”
“But what is it?” I asked in surprise, as I stood in wonder at her side, gazing upon the heap of broken glass tubes.
“It is the secret which the British Government, suspecting that my father held it, wished to secure,” she answered. “They thought, because he came abroad, they having once refused to deal with him, that he intended to dispose of it to a foreign Power. But they were wrong. My father came here to live and to work in the secrecy of this strong-room, which he had built to experiment in and further perfect his discovery. And my mother as a widow, living under the assumed name of Mrs. Kennedy-Foster, resided close by up at the Villa Luba.”
“The Signora Kennedy-Foster was his wife!” cried Ansaldi amazed. “What was his discovery?”
“He had succeeded in doing what all scientists had hitherto failed to accomplish, and what all scientists, ever since the discovery by Marconi of wireless telegraphy, have been seeking to discover, namely, the means by which the Hertzian rays could be concentrated and directed. My father had discovered it, and on doing so was startled to find that an unseen power, the irresistible potency of which was unsuspected by the world, lay in his hands. Nothing could resist the deadly ray of electricity emanating from this innocent-looking apparatus. Steel would melt like water, the explosives on board the greatest battleship afloat could be fired by simply directing the current upon it from any distance at which the vessel could be seen. Whole armies could be wiped out in a flash by the silent and unseen current, or the population of hostile cities swept away like flies! Nothing could withstand it. Well, I much fear that my father experimented with it in secret, and people lost their lives. Several mysterious murders were committed in London and the assassin never discovered. They were regarded as mysteries by Scotland Yard, until a young scientist pointed out that they might have been caused by any one who had actually discovered the mode of harnessing and directing Hertzian rays. This aroused the suspicions of the police who, having some slight evidence of my father’s discovery, denounced him as a most ferocious criminal, who had sacrificed human life in the course of his experiments. In fact, they feared him, and the Government, seized by panic, resolved, at all hazards, to possess themselves of the terrible invention, rather than allow it to go into the hands of any foreign Power. My father offered it to the War Office, but having been denounced as a criminal, the authorities refused to treat with him. Hence the later action of the Home Secretary in demanding his arrest.”
“But why was he killed just at that time?” I asked eagerly, utterly amazed at her revelations.
“He, unfortunately, had neglected to turn off the additional electric-light current by this switch,” she explained. “When alone, locked in this room experimenting, he would turn on all the current possible, and from this delicate apparatus he had sufficient power to annihilate an army. In the night my mother, passing as Mrs. Kennedy-Foster, had been in the habit of visiting him disguised as an old woman, bringing him in secret various electrical parts, which were made for him in Milan and Paris. On the night of his death my mother had visited him, and he had, no doubt, forgotten to turn off the switch, therefore from the apparatus in its place of concealment there emanated a deadly unseen ray which, as he seated himself in his writing-chair over yonder, passed clean through him, causing a wound much resembling a revolver-shot, and singeing his clothes. Again the same thing happened in the case of Bruno, and again to Flugel, who was searching in order to possess himself of the apparatus, with a sinister object. It is a great escape for you all that neither of you has passed through the exact line in which that fatal ray became directed, otherwise others of you would certainly have fallen victims. See!” she added, pointing to a dark-brown spot upon the concrete floor which the police had hitherto taken for a bullet-mark. “This is the mark where the ray fell upon the concrete, causing it to slowly crumble and decay. There is no danger now,” she added, taking some of the secret apparatus from the cavity in the wall and placing it upon the table. “The most intricate part—the part of which I have no absolute knowledge and which was unknown to all save my dead father—is the portion lying there broken.”
“Then the secret of this most deadly discovery is irretrievably lost—eh?” asked the Chevalier, bending eagerly towards her.
“Yes. Happily for the world, or its possibilities in the hands of the unscrupulous would surely have been terrible. Life or property would never be secure,” she declared.
“And am I forbidden to divulge this to Scotland Yard?” asked the Chevalier.
“Yes. I hold you both to your promise,” she said quickly. “The jewels you discovered were my father’s, for he was a diamond merchant in Hatton Garden before he took up electricity as a hobby. I shall not, however, claim them, for I prefer that the London police should still remain in the belief that I lost my life by drowning. It is true that I am in possession of the greater part of my father’s secret, for, with Flugel, I assisted him in the construction of his first satisfactory apparatus. But I will never betray it, for in the interests of humanity I feel it is far better that the terrible discovery of such means of destruction should be lost to the world for ever.”
To-day, as I close this chapter of mes souvenirs, I have received a letter from Mademoiselle Agnes, telling me that she has rejoined her mother in Brussels, where they intend to live in future.
Madame is a real widow now. Pauvre Madame! Recollections of her often cross my mind. Et Monsieur?
Perhaps after all it is as well that the world has lost the advantage of his terrible secret.
My life up here in beautiful Fiesole with Frau Staben is too triste. I prefer more movement, and a mistress more chic. Peugh! those blouse-and-skirt Germans!
Ah! oui. I shall give notice to-day.
I am sick and tired of Firenze la Bella.