CHAPTER VII
THE CHAMBER OF SECRETS
July 2nd
On the eighteenth day of April in the year 1909, there occurred in the ancient city of Florence—the Winter City of the English—an astounding affair, the real truth of which, had it been known, would certainly have struck terror into the heart of Europe.
Most fortunately for the public mind, the truth was only known to half-a-dozen or so persons, of whom I, Mariette Le Bas, femme-de-chambre, chanced to be one; yet it was a truth so full of appalling possibilities that, by mutual consent, both the authorities at your Scotland Yard, in London, and the Pubblica Sicurezza of Italy, treated the problem with the utmost discretion, and decided that the facts must be suppressed; that at all hazards the Press must be kept in ignorance, otherwise the utmost public alarm would be created throughout every civilised community.
Hence it was that the amazing facts concerning the mysterious anglais, William Cornforth, were hushed up; and now only after a lapse of time have I received permission to place on record what actually came before me as an eye-witness of perhaps the most remarkable sequence of events within the knowledge of the present age.
It was three o’clock in the afternoon on the day indicated.
Monsieur le Chef de Police shrugged his shoulders, tossed away his cigarette, and hitching his thumb into the armhole of his white waistcoat, turned to me and said in French—
“Ah! my dear mam’zelle. That is just the problem! It is inexplicable. I have asked you to call because you knew this Englishman.”
“Well, what is your opinion, m’sieur?” I asked, glancing around the big, sombre room of that huge mediæval Florentine palace which is nowadays the Prefecture of Police. The long windows looking out into the cool, shady courtyard, with its time-worn, plashing fountain, were heavily barred, while the finely-frescoed ceiling, where the burnished gold was still brilliant after a lapse of five centuries, bore the arms of the great house of Medici.
Ma foi! Italy is, indeed, a country of violent contrasts. Here, in those quiet, old-world surroundings sat the Chevalier Luigi Ansaldi, the tall, thin, bald-headed, dark-bearded man who was the most astute police official that Europe had ever known; his telephones, telegraphs and speaking-tubes in the adjoining chamber, controlling the whole of Italy’s police, numbering nearly one hundred thousand officers and men of the Pubblica Sicurezza, together with another five thousand or so agents of the secret police distributed at home and abroad, as precautions against the ever-recurring Anarchist plots.
“I have no theory, mam’zelle,” he admitted, slowly stroking his beard with his white hand, as, at that moment, his secretary entered, bearing two yellow official telegrams, which he read, and upon them pencilled replies.
“Order Naples to arrest all four to-night and send them here for interrogation,” he said abruptly.
“Si, Signor Cavaliere,” replied the other, who then retired.
Luigi Ansaldi was ubiquitous. He was ever travelling from one city to another, yet he preferred to make Florence his headquarters rather than Rome, it being nearer the centre of the kingdom. Save his Majesty the King, no man in the whole country wielded such power. Upon his simple signature to a warrant a suspect could be arrested on suspicion, and kept in confinement without trial for any period up to six months. In the meantime his innocence would be proved, or he would confess. And this power had been given him to enable him to cope successfully with the ever-recurring Anarchist conspiracies. The tragic death of Re Umberto had been the reason for granting such wide powers.
Bon Dieu! That quiet, sombre chamber in which I sat was, indeed, a Chamber of Secrets. In the very chair I was now occupying had been seated many a guilty wretch who, on being interrogated by the famous official, had been unable to resist those dark, penetrating eyes of his, and had, in terror, confessed his crimes.
Few men, indeed, could withstand the searching cross-examination of Luigi Ansaldi, the clever, up-to-date scientific man, who laughed at our Paris sûreté and all its antiquated methods, and used to declare that many English laws were made for the protection, and not the detection, of the criminal.
Outside the open windows the old-world city of Florence palpitated beneath the blazing sun. But the courtyard of the palace was quiet and cool, and the only movement was the steady pacing of a drowsy police sentry.
Now and then came the sharp ring of a telephone-bell or the click of a typewriter. But beyond there was no other sound. The silence of the afternoon siesta was over everything.
Luigi Ansaldi, chief of secret police, held no theory. The enigma was beyond solution. Strange that I, a mere insignificant femme-de-chambre, should be consulted.
“You see, mam’zelle,” he said, speaking French well, “there are a number of points in the case which render it, perhaps, the most remarkable problem ever presented to us to solve. Now let us examine the facts,” he went on, slowly lighting a fresh cigarette.
“This Signor Cornforth, a tall, thin man, apparently a wanderer like so many of the English, arrives here in Florence six months ago and puts up at the Savoy. He becomes infatuated with the city, and rents the fine Villa Borelli, up on the hill behind the Boboli Gardens. He is received by the foreign colony, though they know little about him; is elected a member of the select Florence Club, and throughout the winter, apparently, has a very pleasant time of it.”
“Mais, oui,” I said; “he went everywhere—to the Corsinis’, the Fabricottis’, the Spinolas’ and to the British Consul’s.”
“You had no idea what was in progress at his villa?” the official asked, glancing at me quickly.
“Jamais. I often went there with messages for my mistress, Madame Kennedy-Foster, but suspected nothing.”
“Well, he made no outward exhibition of wealth, save that he furnished his house well, and, being a bachelor, gave uncommonly good dinners. I have his dossier here,” he said, pointing to a bundle of papers. “The secret report which we keep of all foreigners contains no suspicions, except one rather curious fact. Listen! This was made three months ago.”
He drew a blue paper from the bundle, and spreading it out upon the table, read in Italian—
“Report by Enrico Ferri, caretaker of Villa Pontedera upon Signor Guglielmo Cornforth, of Villa Borelli:—
“This signore is evidently a man of somewhat limited means, for his two servants say he is extremely economical over his household accounts. He receives and dispatches a voluminous correspondence with persons abroad. No woman ever enters the house, save a French femme-de-chambre who has carried messages to him, but at night on four occasions, namely, on January 2nd, 11th, 16th and 26th, I have watched and have seen, about three o’clock in the morning, an old, ugly and ill-dressed woman, apparently English, carrying a small handbag, enter the iron gate, which the signore himself had evidently unlocked for her. She remains usually about an hour, and then leaves, the signore locking the gate after her.”
“Très curieux!” I remarked. “I wonder who she was?”
“Yes,” said Ansaldi, “that is the only suspicious circumstance reported. It was curious why he should receive his visitor in the night. Evidently the old lady wished her visits to him to remain a secret.”
“Does the man who made that confidential report describe her?” I inquired.
“Yes. He says she had white hair, and was, he believes, about sixty-eight or seventy.”
“You have no suspicion of her?”
He merely shrugged his shoulders, then added—
“I have interrogated both men-servants—for he seems to have hated to have women about him. But neither has ever set eyes upon this mysterious midnight visitor.”
“The circumstances are certainly very strange, m’sieur, to say the least,” I remarked.
“Ah, mam’zelle, you are not aware of the whole facts,” replied the world-famous official. “At three o’clock this morning I received a telegram from the police in London asking me to keep this William Cornforth under observation, as a warrant for his arrest on very serious charges was being applied for by the British Ambassador in Rome. In consequence, I sent an agent to watch outside the villa. At half-past four a shabbily-dressed old lady came forth and descended the hill to the Porta Romana. No one else left the house, but on receiving a message from the Minister of Justice in Rome just after eleven o’clock ordering the arrest, I took two agents and drove out to the villa. The servant who admitted me said that his master was not up, but on ascending to his room I found that the bed had not been slept in, and there was every evidence that he had dressed hurriedly and departed.”
“Ma foi! So he left disguised as an old woman right under the very nose of your agent—eh?”
“Listen, mam’zelle! The curious point is that on going to the small room on the ground floor which Mr. Cornforth used as study, I found the door locked. It seemed a remarkably strong one, and presently, when all efforts to open it had failed, I suddenly awoke to the fact that it was no ordinary door, but the steel door of a strong-room! It is locked, and up to the present it has resisted all efforts to open it! I have sent for professional safe-makers, and they are at work upon the door, trying to open it. I wonder if they have succeeded yet? The house is on the telephone.”
And taking up the instrument, he gave orders to be put through to the house of the suspect.
In a few moments he was speaking with one of his agents, who reported that the safe-makers had declared that the only way to effect an entrance was to use an electric current upon the door, or an acetylene jet, and so twist the bolts from their sockets. The make of safe was one of the very latest, and the room was absolutely impregnable.
“Let them act as they think best,” said the Chef de Police, and then, putting down the receiver, he said, “I’m going up there again myself. Perhaps you may care to come to the house, mam’zelle?”
Entendu! I jumped at the offer, and a few moments later we were in the Chevalier’s grey motor-car, speeding out through the ancient gateway on the road to Rome, and up the hill where stand the great white villas of the wealthy foreigners who spend their winters in the Lily City.
Why Monsieur Cornforth was so urgently wanted by the London police greatly puzzled me.
I suppose I ought to explain here that, for the past four months I had been in the service of Madame Kennedy-Foster, who had engaged me in a bureau de placement in London, and who occupied a villa high up on the pretty Viale outside the city, further up than that occupied by Monsieur Cornforth.
Madame was a widow, wealthy, very elegant and a devout Roman Catholic. She had been a great traveller, and her husband, an English general, being dead, she had now settled down in Florence, that city of the tea-table “tabbie.”
My mistress had frequently sent me with notes to the mysterious Monsieur Cornforth—mission très délicate! He had always been extremely polite to me, and had more than once slipped a louis into my hand. On several occasions he had come to the Villa Luba to dine, and it appeared to me as though he and Madame were very old friends. Chose singulière. Madame kept but little company. Indeed, I think that Monsieur Cornforth was the only gentleman who ever visited her during the period I was in her service.
And on such occasions they had been closely closeted together in the big white drawing-room after dinner. Moi, I had listened on several occasions, but I had heard nothing.
At times, a great exchange of important messages took place between Madame and Monsieur. Then Madame departed suddenly for Dresden alone. She did not require a maid, she said. After an absence of ten days she returned and sent a hurried note to Monsieur.
Then, a week later, Madame had a sharp attack of neurasthénie, and after her recovery left for Trieste again without a maid, and two days before Monsieur le Chevalier had summoned me to the Prefecture for interrogation, I had received a curt note with my congé and the wages due to me.
Madame, who was so devoutly religious, had left Florence mysteriously, never to return. Mystère!
Dieu! Florence is an amazing place. One section of English society is perhaps the narrowest, most backbiting and slanderous in the whole of Europe, while the other is the most cosmopolitan and Bohemian.
Monsieur Cornforth’s villa, a large, square, ancient house, which was the Austrian Embassy in the days when Florence was the capital, stood behind a high wall in the centre of pretty gardens, brilliant with flowers. The great iron door which led to the carriage drive was opened to us by a policeman in uniform, and as the car swung up towards the house it was closed again, for outside in the roadway a crowd of the curious had assembled.
On entering the wide, cool, marble hall where I had so many times handed my notes to the monsieur now dead, we saw, at the end, several workmen engaged upon a white-enamelled door. One of them came forward—evidently a foreman—and addressing the Chevalier, said—
“My firm constructed this strong-room for the English signore six months ago—before the house was furnished. Our orders were to conceal the fact of what was being done, and the men were well paid for their silence. Outwardly, there is nothing to show that the room is burglar-proof, except that there is no fireplace, and only a small ventilator in place of a window. The walls, thick originally, are lined with a metre of steel and concrete, and the door is the very latest word in safe-doors.”
“But what was the object of its construction?” asked the Chief of Police.
“We have no idea, Signor Cavaliere. We simply carried out the Englishman’s instructions to render the room absolutely impregnable, regardless of what it might cost, and to complete the work in utmost secrecy.”
“And can’t you open the door?” I asked.
“We are now trying.” And pointing to an electric cable which lay along the hall, he added, “The electric-light people have put a cable on to their main, and we hope to get it open before long.”
I advanced with Ansaldi, and watched the scientific operations.
From the two men-servants, both of whom I knew well, it was apparent that they had no idea that the room without a window, and lit always by electricity, was a strong-room. Their master had accounted for it by stating that his oculist had ordered him to read and write by artificial light.
The mystery of that closed chamber held every one full of anxiety. Monsieur Cornforth, somehow suspecting that the police were coming for him, had either got away before their arrival, or else had escaped disguised as an old woman. Monsieur le Chevalier was full of chagrin that he had so neatly slipped away, and had already telegraphed to the frontiers and to the various ports to prevent him leaving Italy. He was confident of finding him, but, in view of the urgency of Scotland Yard’s request, he was full of regret. It was against his reputation to allow a suspect to get away so easily, and he was proud of his reputation.
When at last all the appliances—steel plates and wires—had been fixed upon the door and the cable attached, we stood by to watch.
Presently we all drew away, and the powerful current was turned full on, when quickly the steel of the door began to fuse in places, and gradually, with a loud groaning and wrenching, the flat enamelled door, slowly blistering, bulging, bursting, began to twist and writhe almost like a living thing. Steel bolts snapped off like wood under the immense strain, and the bottom of the door gradually came forward, while the top sank inward, with a loud grinding—the rending of steel.
Again and again was the current turned upon the fast-yielding door, until at last the man directing the operations declared that it was sufficiently free to be opened and allow the passage of a man within. Therefore the cable was detached, the steel plates removed, and six strong men, placing their shoulders to the heavy twisted door, succeeded in moving it inward until there was an opening of two feet, through which the Chevalier passed, I following at his heels.
Next second we were within the closed chamber, where the electric light was still burning.
As I entered I sprang back with a loud cry.
Bon Dieu! what met my eyes held me spellbound and stupefied.
The interior of the impregnable chamber presented no unusual appearance, except that in place where the window had been, hung a pair of thick curtains of purple plush, bordered with deep gilt embroidery. The carpet was a thick one, of a delicate shade of grey, with wreaths of tiny roses, while before the curtains was set a large table covered with green baize. On the other side was a writing-table, littered with papers, while around the white, steel-lined walls were cases filled with books.
Four strong electric lamps, illuminating every corner of the room, revealed the ghastly fact that upon the floor close to the writing-table, stretched face downwards, lay the body of Madame’s friend, the tall, thin Monsieur Cornforth.
Ansaldi and the others rushed across and lifted him, when it was seen that upon the carpet was the ugly stain of blood flowing from a bullet-wound beneath the left shoulder-blade.
“He’s committed suicide to evade arrest!” somebody remarked.
But the chief of the detective service, after a swift examination of the wound, said gravely, in Italian—
“This is no case of suicide. It is murder! It would be impossible for him to have inflicted this wound himself. See! the weapon must have been fired quite closely, for the cloth of his jacket is badly singed. No,” he added, “murder has been done. The assassin must have crept up behind while he sat writing and fired the fatal shot. See! The pen is upon the ground, where it dropped from his fingers, and the chair overturned as he fell.”
The agents of police searched the place thoroughly, but could not discover any weapon whatever. That the mysterious anglais had been assassinated there could be no doubt.
In company with the astute Chevalier, the man of a hundred disguises, whose ingenuity in the tracking of criminals was unequalled, I made a tour of the apartment. This amazing discovery had instantly placed him upon his mettle. He had eyes everywhere, and ere his men began to realise the extraordinary situation he had already grasped the whole, and was busy prying everywhere.
“Morandi,” he said, calling one of the brigadiers of the brigade mobile to him, “telephone to Doctor Bellini that I want him here at once, and cancel all inquiries and watch set for the missing Englishman.”
“Si, signore!” replied the little dark-faced man in grey, and he left to carry out his chief’s orders.
The workmen who had opened the steel door were asked to retire, and only the great chef du sûreté, myself and two agents remained in that strange chamber of death. I gazed upon the white, distorted face of the eccentric man so urgently wanted by the London police, and wondered what crime he could have committed, curious that he should have been so mysteriously murdered at the very moment of his impending arrest.
One of the detectives had covered the body with the dark green baize, while search of the room, and indeed of the whole house, revealed nothing.
The police doctor, a fussy, excitable little Hebrew, in gold pince-nez, arrived, examined the body of my friend, and without hesitation pronounced it to be a case of assassination.
“The unfortunate signore was shot in the back by some one who crept up to him quite close. A large, soft-nosed bullet was used,” he said. “The wound is in a downward direction, showing that the assassin was standing and the victim seated.”
“Are you quite certain that it is not a case of suicide?” asked Ansaldi.
“Absolutely! I will stake my professional reputation that it is not. Besides, have you found the weapon?”
“No,” replied the chief of the detective service; “yet the makers of this strong-room have assured us that the door was not only locked but bolted on the inside.”
The doctor smiled incredulously.
“That may have been,” he said. “But surely there was some way out for the assassin.”
“No. That’s just the point! There is not. We’ve examined this room very thoroughly. The foreman who directed the building of it says that everywhere the metre-thick walls, floor and ceiling were reinforced by another metre of concrete and steel, making it both bomb-proof and burglar-proof.”
“But why did this gentleman, whom I have met many times lately, want to live in a bomb-proof room?” asked the fussy little man.
“Ah! at present it is quite inexplicable. You have cleared up the question whether it is a case of suicide, doctor. For the present, that is as far as you can assist us.”
I could see that the chef du sûreté, having obtained the medical opinion he desired, wished to get rid of the doctor and pursue his investigations himself.
Both servants declared that their master was in his usual health on the previous night. He had returned from the Pergola theatre about midnight, drank a whisky-and-soda in the dining-room, and went straight to his room. The door of the study had seldom been locked, except when he was busy writing. They, of course, knew that the door was a heavy one, but never dreamed that the chamber was bomb-proof.
In the night no sound had been heard. If the old woman had been seen to leave she must have entered and left quite noiselessly, for one of the men, the cook, always slept with his room-door open.
Très extraordinaire! The further the Chevalier carried his inquires the more inexplicable the crime became.
Until late that evening I remained at the villa watching the marvellous ingenuity and great painstaking of the man who was the prince of police agents. No point was too small for his investigation. Finger-prints were taken in various parts of the room, together with a complete set of those of Madame’s mysterious friend. The carpet was examined minutely, Ansaldi himself taking off his coat and spending nearly an hour on all fours.
Certain theories were advanced by his lieutenants, all of which, however, he dismissed quickly.
“We shall know more,” he declared in French, “when Scotland Yard reply to my question as to what crime this man was guilty of. Never, mam’zelle, in my experience,” he added, addressing me, “have the English police been so very anxious to make an arrest. The crime must have been of a most serious character. I telegraphed at noon. We shall have a reply before nine, I hope.”
Meanwhile, rumours of the discovery of the body of Monsieur Cornforth had got about, and the greatest sensation was caused in the city where, in the English colony, the “wanted” man was so very well known.
The British Consulate was besieged by inquiries, but they knew nothing. It was purely a police matter, they replied.
I went back to the cheap pension in the Via Cavour to which I had moved after Madame’s disappearance, much puzzled over the extraordinary affair. Later that evening I again went round to the Prefecture of Police to inquire if any response from London had been received to the official telegram.
Ansaldi was in his room, sharp-eyed, quick, full of energy.
“No, mam’zelle,” was his reply. “All that Scotland Yard has replied is this,” and he handed me a telegram in English, which read—
“To the Chevalier Luigi Ansaldi, Prefecture of Police, Florence.—Beg to acknowledge telegram reporting death in Florence of William Cornforth. Make no further inquiry, and prevent Press from publishing details. Kindly furnish us with photograph of body, and full measurements and description. Matter one of strictest confidence; regret cannot explain further.—Chetwynd, Commissioner of Metropolitan Police, New Scotland Yard, London.”
“Parbleu! Why is it a matter of such strict confidence?” I asked, looking across at him in surprise.
“Ah!” he laughed. “Who knows? The English police are so very strange in their ways. They are so discreet that they often defeat their own ends, and allow the criminal to go unpunished. Surely, if I take the trouble to render them assistance they might, at least, in common courtesy, reply in confidence to my simple question.”
He seemed much annoyed at the treatment he had received.
“Perhaps, m’sieur, the London police want to hush up the matter.”
“It seems almost as though they do, for I have been on the telephone to the Minister of Justice in Rome, and he tells me the British Ambassador called upon him an hour ago to request that no further notice be taken of the matter—now that the suspect is dead.”
“But monsieur has been mysteriously murdered!” I exclaimed. “Do they wish you to drop all inquiry?”
“So it seems.”
“You have reported that it is murder, and not suicide?”
“Most certainly. A telegram was sent direct to London within a quarter of an hour of our discovery,” answered the Chevalier, for he was, I saw, as greatly puzzled by the strange turn of affairs as myself.
“The further I proceed, the more remarkable this affair becomes,” declared the famous official, leaning back in his padded writing-chair. “This Englishman was an intimate friend of your late mistress, Madame Kennedy-Foster. She suddenly flies from Florence, and then Cornforth is murdered—killed at the very moment when the police were wanting him. By whom?” and he extended his palms, his characteristic attitude when mystified.
“Then, again,” he went on, “we have some very remarkable features in the case to elucidate before we can arrive at any clear theory. A wandering Englishman arrives here. He is, apparently, not too well off, yet sufficiently wealthy to turn his study in secret into a bomb-proof chamber. He furnishes his house regardless of expense, yet is niggardly over his small expenditure. And, further, he has a mysterious visitor in the shabby old woman reported to us. Who was she? Was she your mistress in disguise? For what reason did he require his study to be a strong-room such as is used by banks to store bullion? There is nothing of value concealed there! Indeed, we have it on the evidence of the servants that the door was often left wide open!”
“Monsieur was eccentric,” I suggested.
“No,” declared my friend. “It was not a mere whim. I am convinced of that. He had that room converted into a stronghold with some distinct purpose. If we could discover it, we might probably be able to probe the mystery.”
“The chief point to my mind, m’sieur, is how the assassin escaped.”
“Ah!” he cried. “There we are absolutely in the dark. The steel door was certainly bolted on the inside. I saw those second bolts give when the electric current was applied. The man who fixed the door afterwards examined it, and told me that it had been fastened on the inside by means of a combination lock—the very latest patent upon a safe-door. Yet he certainly did not die by his own hand, and no revolver was in the chamber.”
“Eh bien! And the ventilator?”
“I have examined it, and it is quite out of the question. It only consists of four small tubes of steel, each two inches in diameter. A cat couldn’t pass through either of them.”
“Then it is a problem utterly inscrutable?”
“Yes,” he said. “And it is rendered the more inexplicable by this strange reply from the London police, by which they endeavour to hush up the mysterious death of the very man for whom, a few hours before, they had raised a hue-and-cry! Ah, mam’zelle!” he added, “this is certainly the most remarkable enigma which I have ever had placed before me!”