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The Czar's Spy: The Mystery of a Silent Love

by William Le Queux · English · Gutenberg #10102 · 528,368 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: The Czar's Spy: The Mystery of a Silent Love

Author: William Le Queux


        
Release date: November 1, 2003 [eBook #10102]
                Most recently updated: October 28, 2024

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CZAR'S SPY: THE MYSTERY OF A SILENT LOVE ***

THE CZAR'S SPY

_The Mystery of a Silent Love_

By CHEVALIER WILLIAM LE QUEUX
_Author of "The Closed Book," Etc._



 1905.


CONTENTS


CHAPTER


    I. HIS BRITANNIC MAJESTY'S SERVICE

   II. WHY THE SAFE WAS OPENED

  III. THE HOUSE "OVER THE WATER"

   IV. IN WHICH THE MYSTERY INCREASES

    V. CONTAINS CERTAIN CONFIDENCES

   VI. THE GATHERING OF THE CLOUDS

  VII. CONTAINS A SURPRISE

 VIII. LIFE'S COUNTER-CLAIM

   IX. STRANGE DISCLOSURES ARE MADE

    X. I SHOW MY HAND

   XI. THE CASTLE OF THE TERROR

  XII. "THE STRANGLER"

 XIII. A DOUBLE GAME AND ITS CONSEQUENCES

  XIV. HER HIGHNESS IS INQUISITIVE

   XV. JUST OFF THE STRAND

  XVI. MARKED MEN

 XVII. THE TRUTH ABOUT THE "LOLA"

XVIII. CONTAINS ELMA'S STORY

CONCLUSION




CHAPTER I

HIS BRITANNIC MAJESTY'S SERVICE


"There was a mysterious affair last night, signore."

"Oh!" I exclaimed. "Anything that interests us?"

"Yes, signore," replied the tall, thin Italian Consular-clerk, speaking
with a strong accent. "An English steam yacht ran aground on the Meloria
about ten miles out, and was discovered by a fishing-boat who brought
the news to harbor. The Admiral sent out two torpedo-boats, which
managed after a lot of difficulty to bring in the yacht safely, but the
Captain of the Port has a suspicion that the crew were trying to make
away with the vessel."

"To lose her, you mean?"

The faithful Francesco, whose English had mostly been acquired from
sea-faring men, and was not the choicest vocabulary, nodded, and, true
Tuscan that he was, placed his finger upon his closed lips, indicative
of silence.

"Sounds curious," I remarked. "Since the Consul went away on leave
things seem to have been humming--two stabbing affrays, eight drunken
seamen locked up, a mutiny on a tramp steamer, and now a yacht being
cast away--a fairly decent list! And yet some stay-at-home people
complain that British consuls are only paid to be ornamental! They
should spend a week here, at Leghorn, and they'd soon alter their
opinion."

"Yes, they would, signore," responded the thin-faced old fellow with a
grin, as he twisted his fierce gray mustache. Francesco Carducci was a
well-known character in Leghorn; interpreter to the Consulate, and
keeper of a sailor's home, an honest, good-hearted, easy-going fellow,
who for twenty years had occupied the same position under half a dozen
different Consuls. At that moment, however, there came from the outer
office a long-drawn moan.

"Hulloa, what's that?" I enquired, startled.

"Only a mad stoker off the _Oleander_, signore. The captain has brought
him for you to see. They want to send him back to his friends at
Newcastle."

"Oh! a case of madness!" I exclaimed. "Better get Doctor Ridolfi to see
him. I'm not an expert on mental diseases."

My old friend Frank Hutcheson, His Britannic Majesty's Vice-Consul at
the port of Leghorn, was away on leave in England, his duties being
relegated to young Bertram Cavendish, the pro-Consul. The latter,
however, had gone down with a bad touch of malaria which he had picked
up in the deadly Maremma, and I, as the only other Englishman in
Leghorn, had been asked by the Consul-General in Florence to act as
pro-Consul until Hutcheson's return.

It was in mid-July, and the weather was blazing in the glaring
sun-blanched Mediterranean town. If you know Leghorn, you probably know
the Consulate with its black and yellow escutcheon outside, a large,
handsome suite of huge, airy offices facing the cathedral, and
overlooking the principal piazza, which is as big as Trafalgar Square,
and much more picturesque. The legend painted upon the door, "Office
hours, 10 to 3," and the green persiennes closed against the scorching
sun give one the idea of an easy appointment, but such is certainly not
the case, for a Consul's life at a port of discharge must necessarily
be a very active one, and his duties never-ending.

Carducci had left me to the correspondence for half an hour or so, and I
confess I was in no mood to write replies in that stifling heat,
therefore I sat at the Consul's big table, smoking a cigarette and
stretched lazily in my friend's chair, resolving to escape to the cool
of England as soon as he returned in the following week. Italy is all
very well for nine months in the year, but Leghorn is no place for the
Englishman in mid-July. My thoughts were wandering toward the English
lakes, and a bit of grouse-shooting with my uncle up in Scotland, when
the faithful Francesco re-entered, saying--

"I've sent the captain and his madman away till this afternoon, signore.
But there is an English signore waiting to see you."

"Who is he?"

"I don't know him. He will give no name, but wants to see the Signor
Console."

"All right, show him in," I said lazily, and a few moments later a tall,
smartly-dressed, middle-aged Englishman, in a navy serge yachting suit,
entered, and bowing, enquired whether I was the British Consul.

When he had seated himself I explained my position, whereupon he said--

"I couldn't make much out of your clerk. He speaks so brokenly, and I
don't know a word of Italian. But perhaps I ought to first introduce
myself. My name is Philip Hornby," and he handed me a card bearing the
name with the addresses "Woodcroft Park, Somerset ------ Brook's." Then
he added: "I am cruising on board my yacht, the _Lola_, and last night
we unfortunately went aground on the Meloria. I have a new captain whom
I engaged a few months ago, and he seems an arrant fool. Very
fortunately for us a fishing-boat saw our plight and gave the alarm at
port. The Admiral sent out two torpedo-boats and a tug, and after about
three hours they managed to get us off."

"And you are now in harbor?"

"Yes. But the reason I've called is to ask you to do me a favor and
write me a letter of thanks in Italian to the Admiral, and one to the
Captain of the Port--polite letters that I can copy and send to them.
You know the kind of thing."

"Certainly," I replied, the more interested in him on account of the
curious suspicion that the port authorities seemed to entertain. He was
evidently a gentleman, and after I had been with him ten minutes I
scouted the idea that he had endeavored to cast away the _Lola_.

I took down a couple of sheets of paper and scribbled the drafts of two
letters couched in the most elegant phraseology, as is customary when
addressing Italian officialdom.

"Fortunately, I left my wife in England, or she would have been terribly
frightened," he remarked presently. "There was a nasty wind blowing all
night, and the fool of a captain seemed to add to our peril by every
order he gave."

"You are alone, then?"

"I have a friend with me," was the answer.

"And how many of the crew are there?"

"Sixteen, all told."

"English, I suppose?"

"Not all. I find French and Italians are more sober than English, and
better behaved in port."

I examined him critically as he sat facing me, and the mere fact of his
desire to send thanks to the authorities convinced me that he was a
well-bred gentleman. He was about forty-five, with a merry round,
good-natured face, red with the southern sun, blue eyes, and a short
fair beard. His countenance was essentially that of a man devoted to
open-air sport, for it was slightly furrowed and weather-beaten as a
true yachtsman's should be. His speech was refined and cultivated, and
as we chatted he gave me the impression that as an enthusiastic lover of
the sea, he had cruised the Mediterranean many times from Gibraltar up
to Smyrna. He had, however, never before put into Leghorn.

After we had arranged that his captain should come to me in the
afternoon and make a formal report of the accident, we went out together
across the white sunny piazza to Nasi's, the well-known pastry-cook's,
where it is the habit of the Livornese to take their ante-luncheon
vermouth.

The more I saw of Hornby, the more I liked him. He was chatty and witty,
and treated his accident as a huge joke.

"We shall be here quite a week, I suppose," he said as we were taking
our vermouth. "We're on our way down to the Greek Islands, as my friend
Chater wants to see them. The engineer says there's something strained
that we must get mended. But, by the way," he added, "why don't you dine
with us on board to-night? Do. We can give you a few English things that
may be a change to you."

This invitation I gladly accepted for two reasons. One was because the
suspicions of the Captain of the Port had aroused my curiosity, and the
other was because I had, honestly speaking, taken a great fancy to
Hornby.

The captain of the _Lola_, a short, thickset Scotsman from Dundee, with
a barely healed cicatrice across his left cheek, called at the Consulate
at two o'clock and made his report, which appeared to me to be a very
lame one. He struck me as being unworthy his certificate, for he was
evidently entirely out of his bearings when the accident occurred. The
owner and his friend Chater were in their berths asleep, when suddenly
he discovered that the vessel was making no headway. They had, in fact,
run upon the dangerous shoal without being aware of it. A strong sea was
running with a stiff breeze, and although his seamanship was poor, he
was capable enough to recognize at once that they were in a very
perilous position.

"Very fortunate it wasn't more serious, sir," he added, after telling me
his story, which I wrote at his dictation for the ultimate benefit of
the Board of Trade.

"Didn't you send up signals of distress?" I Inquired.

"No, sir--never thought of it."

"And yet you knew that you might be lost?" I remarked with recurring
suspicion.

The canny Scot, whose name was Mackintosh, hesitated a few moments, then
answered--

"Well, sir, you see the fishing-boat had sighted us, and we saw her
turning back to port to fetch help."

His excuse was a neat one. Probably it was his neglect to make signals
of distress that had aroused the suspicions of the Captain of the Port.
From first to last the story of the master of the _Lola_ was, I
considered, a very unsatisfactory one.

"How long have you been in Mr. Hornby's service?" I inquired.

"Six months, sir," was the man's reply. "Before he engaged me, I was
with the Wilsons, of Hull, running up the Baltic."

"As master?"

"I've held my master's certificate these fifteen years, sir. I was with
the Bibbys before the Wilsons, and before that with the General Steam.
I did eight years in the Mediterranean with them, when I was chief
mate."

"And you've never been into Leghorn before?"

"Never, sir."

I dismissed the captain with a distinct impression that he had not told
me the whole truth. That cicatrice did not improve his personal
appearance. He had left his certificates on board, he said, but if I
wished he would bring them to me on the morrow.

Was it possible that an attempt had actually been made to cast away the
yacht, and that it had been frustrated by the master of the felucca, who
had sighted the vessel aground? There certainly seemed some mystery
surrounding the circumstances, and my interest in the yacht and its
owner deepened each hour. How, I wondered, had the captain received that
very ugly wound across the cheek? I was half-inclined to inquire of him,
but on reflection decided that it was best to betray no undue curiosity.

That evening when the fiery sun was sinking in its crimson glory,
bathing the glassy sea with its blood-red light and causing the islands
of Gorgona and Capraja to loom forth a deep purple against the distant
horizon, I took a cab along the old sea-road to the port where, within
the inner harbor, I found the _Lola_, one of the most magnificent
private vessels I had ever seen. Her dimensions surprised me. She was
painted dead white, with shining brass everywhere. At the stern hung
limply the British flag, while at the masthead the ensign of the Royal
Yacht Squadron. The yellow funnel emitted no smoke, and as she lay
calmly in the sunset a crowd of dock-loungers and crimps leaned upon the
parapet discussing her merits and wondering who could be the rich
Englishman who could afford to travel in a small liner of his own--for
her size surprised even those Italian dock-hands, used as they were to
seeing every kind of craft enter the busy port.

On stepping on deck Hornby, who like myself wore a clean suit of white
linen as the most sensible dinner-garb in a hot climate, came forward to
greet me, and took me along to the stern where, lying in a long wicker
deck-chair beneath the awning, was a tall, dark-eyed, clean-shaven man
of about forty, also dressed in cool white linen. His keen face gave one
the impression that he was a barrister.

"My friend, Hylton Chater--Mr. Gordon Gregg," he said, introducing us,
and then when, as we shook hands, the clean-shaven man exclaimed,
smiling pleasantly--

"Glad to make your acquaintance, Mr. Gregg. You are not a stranger by
any means to Hornby or myself. Indeed, we've got a couple of your books
on board. But I had no idea you lived out here."

"At Ardenza," I said. "Three miles along the sea-shore. To-morrow I hope
you'll both come and dine with me."

"Delighted, I'm sure," declared Hornby. "To eat ashore is quite a treat
when one has been boxed up on board for some time. So we'll accept,
won't we, Hylton?"

"Certainly," replied the other; and then we began chatting about the
peril of the previous night, Hornby telling me how he had copied the two
letters of thanks in Italian and sent them to their respective
addresses.

"Phil blasphemed like a Levant skipper when he copied those Italian
words!" laughed Chater. "He had made three copies of each letter before
he could get all the lingo in accordance with your copy."

"I've been the whole afternoon at them--confound them!" declared the
owner of the _Lola_ with a laugh. "But, of course, I didn't want to make
a lot of errors in spelling. These Italians are so very punctilious."

"Well, you certainly did the right thing to thank the Admiral," I said.
"It's very unusual for him to send out torpedo-boats to help a vessel in
distress. That is generally left to the harbor tug."

"Yes, I feel that it was most kind of him. That's why I took all the
trouble to write. I don't understand a word of Italian, neither does
Chater."

"But you have Italians on board?" I remarked. "The two sailors who rowed
me out are Genoese, from their accent."

Hornby and Chater exchanged glances--glances of distinct uneasiness, I
thought.

Then the owner of the _Lola_ said--

"Yes, they are useful for making arrangements and buying things in
Italian ports. We have a Spaniard, a Greek, and a Syrian, all of whom
act as interpreters in different places."

"And make a handsome thing in the way of secret commissions, I suppose?"
I laughed.

"Of course. But to cruise in comfort one must pay and be pleasant,"
declared the man with the fair beard. "In Greece and the Levant they are
more rapacious than in Naples, and the Customs officers always want
squaring, otherwise they are for ever rummaging and discovering mares'
nests."

"Did you have any trouble here?" I inquired.

"They didn't visit us," he said with a smile, and at the same time he
rubbed his thumb and finger together, the action of feeling paper money.

This increased my surprise, for I happened to know that the Leghorn
Customs officers were not at all given to the acceptance of bribes. They
were too well watched by their superiors. If the yacht had really
escaped a search, then it was a most unusual thing. Besides, what motive
could Hornby have in eluding the Customs visit? They would, of course,
seal up his wines and liquors, but even if they did, they would leave
him out sufficient for the consumption of himself and his friends.

No. Philip Hornby had some strong motive in paying a heavy bribe to
avoid the visit of the _dogana_. If he really had paid, he must have
paid very heavily; of that I was convinced.

Was it possible that some mystery was hidden on board that splendidly
appointed craft?

Presently the gong sounded, and we went below into the elegantly fitted
saloon, where was spread a table that sparkled with cut glass and shone
with silver. Around the center fresh flowers had been trailed by some
artistic hand, while on the buffet at the end the necks of wine bottles
peered out from the ice pails. Both carpet and upholstery were in pale
blue, while everywhere it was apparent that none but an extremely
wealthy man could afford such a magnificent craft.

Hornby took the head of the table, and we sat on either side of him,
chatting merrily while we ate one of the choicest and best cooked
dinners it has ever been my lot to taste. Chater and I drank wine of a
brand which only a millionaire could keep in his cellar, while our host,
apparently a most abstemious man, took only a glass of iced Cinciano
water.

The two smart stewards served in a manner which showed them to be well
trained to their duties, and as the evening light filtering through the
pale blue silk curtains over the open port-holes slowly faded, we
gossiped on as men will gossip over an unusually good dinner.

From his remarks I discerned that, contrary to my first impression,
Hylton Chater was an experienced yachtsman. He owned a craft called the
_Alicia_, and was a member of the Cork Yacht Club. He lived in London,
he told me, but gave me no information as to his profession. It might be
the law, as I had surmised.

"You've seen our ass of a captain, Mr. Gregg?" he remarked presently.
"What do you think of him?"

"Well," I said rather hesitatingly, "to tell the truth, I don't think
very much of his seamanship--nor will the Board of Trade when his report
reaches them."

"Ah!" exclaimed Hornby, "I was a fool to engage him. From the very first
I mistrusted him, only my wife somehow took a fancy to the fellow, and,
as you know, if you want peace you must always please the women. In this
case, however, her choice almost cost me the vessel, and perhaps our
lives into the bargain."

"You knew nothing of him previously?"

"Nothing."

"And he engaged the crew?" I asked.

"Of course."

"Are they all fresh hands?"

"All except the cook and the two stewards."

I was silent. I did not like Mackintosh. Indeed, I entertained a
distinct suspicion of both master and crew.

"The captain seems to have had a nasty cut across the cheek," I
remarked, whereupon my two companions again exchanged quick,
apprehensive glances.

"He fell down the other day," explained Chater, with a rather sickly
smile, I thought. "His face caught the edge of an iron stair in the
engine-room, and caused a nasty gash."

I smiled within myself, for I knew too well that the ugly wound in the
captain's face had never been inflicted by falling on the edge of a
stair. But I remained silent, being content that they should endeavor
to mislead me.

After dessert had been served we rose, and in the summer twilight, when
all the ports were opened, Hornby took me over the vessel. Everywhere
was abundant luxury--a veritable floating palace. To each of the cabins
of the owner and his guests a bathroom was attached with sea-water or
fresh water as desired, while the ladies' saloon, the boudoir, the
library, and the smoking-room were furnished richly with exquisite
taste. As he was conducting me from his own cabin to the boudoir we
passed a door that had been blown open by the wind, and which he
hastened to close, not, however, before I had time to glance within. To
my surprise I discovered that it was an armory crammed with rifles,
revolvers and ammunition.

It had not been intended that I should see that interior, and the reason
why the Customs officers had been bribed was now apparent.

I passed on without remark, making believe that I had not discerned
anything unusual, and we entered the boudoir, Chater having gone back to
the saloon to obtain cigars.

The dainty little chamber was upholstered in carnation-pink silk with
furniture of inlaid rosewood, and bore everywhere the trace of having
been arranged by a woman's hand, although no lady passenger was on
board.

Just as we had entered, and I was admiring the dainty nest of luxury,
Chater shouted to his host asking for the keys of the cigar cupboard,
and Hornby, excusing himself, turned back along the gangway to hand them
to his friend, thus leaving me alone for a few moments.

I stood glancing around, and as I did so my eyes fell upon a quantity of
photographs, framed and unframed, that were scattered about--evidently
portraits of Hornby's friends. Upon a small side table, however, stood a
heavy oxidized silver frame, but empty, while lying on the floor beneath
a couch was the photograph it had contained, which had apparently been
taken hastily out, torn first in half and then in half again, and cast
away.

Curiosity prompted me to stoop, pick up the four pieces and place them
together, when I found them to form the cabinet portrait of a
sweet-looking and extremely pretty English girl of eighteen or nineteen,
with a bright, smiling expression, and wearing a fresh morning blouse of
white piqué. Her hair was dressed low and fastened with a bow of black
ribbon, while the brooch at her throat was in the form of a heart edged
with pearls. Whether it was her sweet expression, or whether the curious
look in her eyes had attracted my attention and riveted the face upon my
memory, I know not. Perhaps it was the mystery of why it should have
been so hastily torn from its frame and destroyed that held my
attention.

It seemed as though it had been torn up surreptitiously by someone who
had been sitting on that couch, and who had had no opportunity of
casting the fragments away through the port-hole into the water.

I looked at the back of the torn photograph, and saw that it had been
taken by a well-known and fashionable firm in New Bond Street.

About the expression of that pictured face was something which I cannot
describe--a curious look in the eyes which was at the same time both
attractive and mysterious. In that brief moment the girl's features were
indelibly impressed upon my memory.

Next second, however, hearing Hornby's returning footsteps, I flung the
fragments hastily beneath the couch where I had discovered them.

Why, I wondered, had the picture been destroyed--and by whom?

The face of the empty frame had been purposely turned towards the
panelling, therefore when he entered he did not notice that the picture
had been destroyed; but after a brief pause, explaining that that cosy
little place was his wife's particular nook, he conducted me on through
the ladies' saloon and afterwards on deck, where we flung ourselves into
the long chairs, took our coffee and certosina, that liqueur essentially
Tuscan, and smoked on as the moon rose and the lights of the harbor
began to twinkle in the steely night.

As I sat talking, my thoughts ran back to that torn photograph. To me it
seemed as though some previous visitor that day had sat upon the couch,
destroyed the picture, and cast it where I had found it. But for what
reason? Who was the merry-faced girl whose picture had aroused such
jealousy or revenge?

I purposely led the conversation to Hornby's family, and learned from
him that he had no children.

"You'll get the repairs to your engines done at Orlando's, I suppose?" I
remarked, naming the great shipbuilding firm of Leghorn.

"Yes. I've already given the order. They are contracted to be finished
by next Thursday, and then we shall be off to Zante and Chio."

For what reason, I wondered, recollecting that formidable armory on
board. Already I had seen quite sufficient to convince me that the
_Lola_, although outwardly a pleasure yacht, was built of steel, armored
in its most vulnerable parts, and capable of resisting a very sharp
fire.

The hours passed, and beneath the brilliant moon we smoked long into the
night, for after the blazing sunshine of that Tuscan town the cool
sea-wind at night is very refreshing. From where we sat we commanded a
view of the whole of the sea-front of Leghorn and Ardenza, with its
bright open-air café-concerts and restaurants in full swing--all the
life and gayety of that popular watering-place.

Presently, when Hornby had risen to call a steward and left me alone
with Hylton Chater, the latter whispered to me in confidence--

"If you find my friend Hornby a little bit strange in his manner, Mr.
Gregg, you must take no notice. To tell the truth, he is a man who has
become suddenly wealthy beyond the wildest dreams of avarice, and I fear
it has had an effect upon his brain. He does very queer things at
times."

I looked at my companion in surprise. He was either telling the truth,
or else he was endeavoring to allay my suspicions by an extremely clever
ruse. Now I had already decided that Philip Hornby was no eccentric, but
a particularly level-headed and practical man. Therefore I instantly
arrived at the conclusion that the clean-shaven fellow who looked so
much like a London barrister had some distinct and ulterior purpose in
arousing within my mind suspicion of his host's sanity.

It was past midnight when, having bade the strange pair adieu, I was put
ashore by the two sailors who had rowed me out and drove home along the
sea-front, puzzled and perplexed.

Next morning, on my arrival at the Consulate, old Francesco, who had
entered only a moment before, met me with blanched face, gasping--

"There have been thieves here in the night, signore! The Signor
Console's safe has been opened!"

"The safe!" I cried, dashing into Hutcheson's private room, and finding
to my dismay the big safe, wherein the seals, ciphers and other
confidential documents were kept, standing open, and the contents in
disorder, as though a hasty search had been made among them.

Was it possible that the thieves had been after the Admiralty and
Foreign Office ciphers, copies of which the Chancelleries of certain
European Powers were ever endeavoring to obtain? I smiled within myself
when I realized how bitterly disappointed the burglars must have been,
for a British Consul when he goes on leave to England always takes his
ciphers with him, and deposits them at the Foreign Office for
safekeeping. Hutcheson had, of course, taken his, according to the
regulations.

Curiously enough, however, the door of the Consulate and the safe had
been opened with the keys which my friend had left in my charge. Indeed,
the small bunch still remained in the safe door.

In an instant the recollection flashed across my mind that I had felt
the keys in my pocket while at dinner on board the _Lola_. Had I lost
them on my homeward drive, or had my pocket been picked?

Carducci, with an Italian's volubility, commenced to hurl imprecations
upon the heads of the unknown sons of dogs who dared to tamper with his
master's safe, and while we were engaged in putting the scattered papers
in order the door-bell rang, and the clerk went to attend to the caller.

In a few moments he returned, saying--

"The English yacht left suddenly last night, signore, and the Captain of
the Port has sent to inquire whether you know to what port she is
bound."

"Left!" I gasped in amazement "Why, I thought her engines were
disabled!"

A quarter of an hour later I was sitting in the private office of the
shrewd, gray-haired functionary who had sent this messenger to me.

"Do you know, Signor Commendatore," he said, "some mystery surrounds
that vessel. She is not the _Lola_, for yesterday we telegraphed to
Lloyd's, in London, and this morning I received a reply that no such
yacht appears on their register, and that the name is unknown. The
police have also telegraphed to your English police inquiring about the
owner, Signor Hornby, with a like result. There is no such place as
Woodcroft Park, in Somerset, and no member of Brook's Club of the name
of Hornby."

I sat staring at the official, too amazed to utter a word. Certainly
they had not allowed the grass to grow beneath their feet.

"Unfortunately the telegraphic replies from England are only to hand
this morning," he went on, "because just before two o'clock this morning
the harbor police, whom I specially ordered to watch the vessel, saw a
boat come to the wharf containing a man and woman. The pair were put
ashore, and walked away into the town, the woman seeming to walk with
considerable difficulty. The boat returned, and an hour after, to the
complete surprise of the two detectives, steam was suddenly got up and
the yacht turned and went straight out to sea."

"Leaving the man and the woman?"

"Leaving them, of course. They are probably still in the town. The
police are now searching for traces of them."

"But could not you have detained the vessel?" I suggested.

"Of course, had I but known I could have forbidden her departure. But as
her owner had presented himself at the Consulate, and was recognized as
a respectable person, I felt that I could not interfere without some
tangible information--and that, alas! has come too late. The vessel is
a swift one, and has already seven hours start of us. I've asked the
Admiral to send out a couple of torpedo-boats after her, but,
unfortunately, this is impossible, as the flotilla is sailing in an hour
to attend the naval review at Spezia."

I told him how the Consul's safe had been opened during the night, and
he sat listening with wide-open eyes.

"You dined with them last night," he said at last. "They may have
surreptitiously stolen your keys."

"They may," was my answer. "Probably they did. But with what motive?"

The Captain of the Port elevated his shoulders, exhibited his palms, and
declared--

"The whole affair from beginning to end is a complete and profound
mystery."




CHAPTER II

WHY THE SAFE WAS OPENED


That day was an active one in Questura, or police office, of Leghorn.

Detectives called, examined the safe, and sagely declared it to be
burglar-proof, had not the thieves possessed the key. The Foreign Office
knew that, for they supply all the safes to the Consulates abroad, in
order that the precious ciphers shall be kept from the prying eyes of
foreign spies. The Questore, or chief of police, was of opinion that it
was the ciphers of which the thieves had been in search, and was much
relieved to hear that they were in safekeeping far away in Downing
Street.

His conjecture was the same as my own, namely, that the reason of
Hornby's call upon me was to ascertain the situation of the Consulate
and the whereabouts of the safe, which, by the way, stood in a corner of
the Consul's private room. Captain Mackintosh, too, had taken his
bearings, and probably while I sat at dinner on board the _Lola_ my keys
had been stolen and passed on to the scarred Scotsman, who had promptly
gone ashore and ransacked the place while I had remained with his master
smoking and unsuspicious.

But what was the motive? Why had they ransacked all those confidential
papers?

My own idea was that they were not in search of the ciphers at all, but
either wanted some blank form or other, or else they desired to make use
of the Consular seal. The latter, however, still remained on the floor
near the safe, as though it had rolled out and been left unheeded. As
far as Francesco and I could ascertain, nothing whatever had been taken.
Therefore, we re-arranged the papers, re-locked the safe and resolved
not to telegraph to Hutcheson and unduly disturb him, as in a few days
he would return from England, and there would be time enough then to
explain the remarkable story.

One fact, however, we established. The detective on duty at the railway
station distinctly recollected a thin middle-aged man, accompanied by a
lady in deep black, passing the barrier and entering the train which
left at three o'clock for Colle Salvetti to join the Rome express. They
were foreigners, therefore he did not take the same notice of them as
though they had been Italians. Inquiries at the booking-office showed,
however, that no passengers had booked direct to Rome by the train in
question. To Grossetto, Cecina, Campiglia, and the other places in the
Maremma, passengers had taken tickets, but not one had been booked to
any of the great towns. Therefore it was apparent that the mysterious
pair who had come ashore just prior to the sailing of the yacht had
merely taken tickets for a false destination, and had re-booked at Colle
Salvetti, the junction with that long main line which connects Genoa
with Rome.

The police were puzzled. The two fishermen who sighted the _Lola_ and
first gave the alarm of her danger, declared that when they drew
alongside and proffered assistance the captain threatened to shoot the
first man who came aboard.

"They were English!" remarked the sturdy, brown-faced toilers of the
sea, grinning knowingly. "And the English, when they drink their cognac,
know not what they do."

"Did you get any reward for returning to harbor and reporting?" I
asked.

"Reward!" echoed one of the men, the elder of the pair. "Not a soldo!
The English only cursed us for interfering. That is why we believed that
they were trying to make away with the vessel."

The description of the _Lola_, its owner, his guest, and the captain
were circulated by the police to all the Mediterranean ports, with a
request that the yacht should be detained. Yet if the vessel were really
one of mystery, as it seemed to be, its owner would no doubt go across
to some quiet anchorage on the Algerian coast out of the track of the
vessels, and calmly proceed to repaint, rename and disguise his craft so
that it would not be recognized in Marseilles, Naples, Smyrna, or any of
the ports where private yachts habitually call. Thus, from the very
first, it seemed to me that Hornby and his friends had very cleverly
tricked me for some mysterious purpose, and afterwards ingeniously
evaded their watchers and got clean away.

Had the Italian Admiral been able to send a torpedo-boat or two after
the fugitives they would no doubt soon have been overhauled, yet
circumstances had prevented this and the _Lola_ had consequently
escaped.

For purposes of their own the police kept the affair out of the papers,
and when Frank Hutcheson stepped out of the sleeping-car from Paris on
to the platform at Pisa a few nights afterwards, I related to him the
extraordinary story.

"The scoundrels wanted these, that's evident," he responded, holding up
the small, strong, leather hand-bag he was carrying, and which contained
his jealously-guarded ciphers. "By Jove!" he laughed, "how disappointed
they must have been!"

"It may be so," I said, as we entered the midnight train for Leghorn.
"But my own theory is that they were searching for some paper or other
that you possess."

"What can my papers concern them?" exclaimed the jovial, round-faced
Consul, a man whose courtesy is known to every skipper trading up and
down the Mediterranean, and who is perhaps one of the most cultured and
popular men in the British Consular Service. "I don't keep bank notes in
that safe, you know. We fellows in the Service don't roll in gold as our
public at home appears to think."

"No. But you may have something in there which might be of value to
them. You're often the keeper of valuable documents belonging to
Englishmen abroad, you know."

"Certainly. But there's nothing in there just now except, perhaps, the
registers of births, marriages and deaths of British subjects, and the
papers concerning a Board of Trade inquiry. No, my dear Gordon, depend
upon it that the yacht running ashore was all a blind. They did it so as
to be able to get the run of the Consulate, secure the ciphers, and sail
merrily away with them. It seems to me, however, that they gave you a
jolly good dinner and got nothing in return."

"They might very easily have carried me off too," I declared.

"Perhaps it would have been better if they had. You'd at least have had
the satisfaction of knowing what their little game really was!"

"But the man and the woman who left the yacht an hour before she sailed,
and who slipped away into the country somewhere! I wonder who they were?
Hornby distinctly told me that he and Chater were alone, and yet there
was evidently a lady and a gentleman on board. I guessed there was a
woman there, from the way the boudoir and ladies' saloon were arranged,
and certainly no man's hand decorated a dinner table as that was
decorated."

"Yes. That's decidedly funny," remarked the Consul thoughtfully. "They
went to Colle Salvetti, you say? They changed there, of course.
Expresses call there, one going north and the other south, within a
quarter of an hour after the train arrives from Leghorn. They showed a
lot of ingenuity, otherwise they'd have gone direct to Pisa."

"Ingenuity! I should think so! The whole affair was most cleverly
planned. Hornby would have deceived even you, my dear old chap. He had
the air of the perfect gentleman, and a glance over the yacht convinced
me that he was a wealthy man traveling for pleasure."

"You said something about an armory."

"Yes, there were Maxims stowed away in one of the cabins. They aroused
my suspicions."

"They would not have aroused mine," replied my friend. "Yachts carry
arms for protection in many cases, especially if they are going to
cruise along uncivilized coasts where they must land for water or
provisions."

I told him of the torn photograph, which caused him some deep
reflection.

"I wonder why the picture had been torn up. Had there been a row on
board--a quarrel or something?"

"It had been destroyed surreptitiously, I think."

"Pity you didn't pocket the fragments. We could perhaps have discovered
from the photographer the identity of the original."

"Ah!" I sighed regretfully. "I never thought of that. I recollect the
name of the firm, however."

"I shall have to report to London the whole occurrence, as British
subjects are under suspicion," Hutcheson said. "We'll see whether
Scotland Yard knows anything about Hornby or Chater. Most probably they
do. Not long ago a description of men on board a yacht was circulated
from London as being a pair of well-known burglars who were cruising
about in a vessel crammed with booty which they dared not get rid of.
They are, however, not the same as our friends on the _Lola_, for both
men wanted were arrested in New Orleans about eight months ago, without
their yacht, for they confessed that they had deliberately sunk it on
one of the islands in the South Pacific."

"Then these fellows might be another pair of London burglars!" I
exclaimed eagerly, as the startling theory occurred to me.

"They might be. But, of course, we can't form any opinion until we hear
what Scotland Yard has to say. I'll write a full report in the morning
if you will give me minute descriptions of the men, as well as of the
captain, Mackintosh."

Next morning I handed over my charge of the Consulate to Frank, and then
assisted him to go through the papers in the safe which had been
examined by the thieves.

"The ruffians seem to have thoroughly overhauled everything," remarked
the Consul in dismay when he saw the disordered state of his papers.
"They seem to have read every one deliberately."

"Which shows that had they been in search for the cipher-books they
would only have looked for them alone," I remarked decisively. "What on
earth could interest them in all these dry, unimportant shipping reports
and things?"

"Goodness only knows," replied my friend. Then, calling Cavendish, a
tall, fair young man, who had now recovered from his touch of fever and
had returned to the Consulate, he commenced to check the number of those
adhesive stamps, rather larger than ordinary postage-stamps, used in
the Consular service for the registration of fees received by the
Foreign Office. The values were from sixpence to one pound, and they
were kept in a portfolio.

After a long calculation the Consul suddenly raised his face to me and
said--

"Then six ten shilling ones have been taken!"

"Why? There must be some motive!"

"They are of no use to anyone except to Consuls," he explained. "Perhaps
they were wanted to affix to some false certificate. See," he added,
opening the portfolio, "there were six stamps here, and all are gone."

"But they would have to be obliterated by the Consular stamp," remarked
Cavendish.

"Ah! of course," exclaimed Hutcheson, taking out the brass seal from the
safe and examining it minutely. "By Jove!" he cried a second later,
"it's been used! They've stamped some document with it. Look! They've
used the wrong ink-pad! Can't you see that there's violet upon it, while
we always use the black pad!"

I took it in my hand, and there, sure enough, I saw traces of violet ink
upon it--the ink of the pad for the date-stamp upon the Consul's table.

"Then some document has been stamped and sealed!" I gasped.

"Yes. And my signature forged to it, no doubt. They've fabricated some
certificate or other which, bearing the stamp, seal and signature of the
Consulate, will be accepted as a legal document. I wonder what it is?"

"Ah!" I said. "I wonder!" And the three of us looked at each other in
sheer bewilderment.

"The reason the papers are all upset is because they were evidently in
search of some blank form or other, which they hoped to find," remarked
my friend. "As you say, the whole affair was most carefully and
ingeniously planned."

We crossed the great sunlit piazza together and entered the Questura,
that sun-blanched old palace with its long cool loggia where the sentry
paces day and night. The Chief of Police, whom we saw, had no further
information. The mysterious yacht had not put in at any Italian port.
From him, however, we learned the name of the detective who had seen the
two strangers leave Leghorn by the early morning train, and an hour
afterwards the police-officer, a black-eyed man short of stature, but of
an intelligent type, sat in the Consulate replying to our questions.

"As far as I could make out, signore," he said, "the man was an
Englishman, wearing a soft black felt hat and a suit of dark blue serge.
He had hair just turning gray, a small dark mustache and rather high
cheek-bones. In his hand he carried a small bag of tan leather of that
square English shape. He seemed in no hurry, for he was calmly smoking a
cigarette as he went across to the ticket office."

"And his companion?" asked the Consul.

"She was in black. Rather tall and slim. Her hair was fair, I noticed,
but she wore a black veil which concealed her features."

"Was she young or old?"

"Young--from her figure," replied the police agent. "As she passed me
her eyes met mine, and I thought I saw a strange fixed kind of glare in
them--the look of a woman filled with some unspeakable horror."

Next day the town of Leghorn awoke to find itself gay with bunting, the
Italian and English flags flying side by side everywhere, and the
Consular standard flapping over the Consulate in the piazza. In the
night the British Mediterranean fleet, cruising down from Malta, had
come into the roadstead, and at the signal from the flagship had
maneuvered and dropped anchor, forming a long line of gigantic
battleships, swift cruisers, torpedo-boat destroyers, torpedo-boats,
despatch-boats, and other craft extending for several miles along the
coast.

In the bright morning sunlight the sight was both picturesque and
imposing, for from every vessel flags were flying, and ever and anon the
great battleship of the Admiral made signals which were repeated by all
the other vessels, each in turn. Lying still on those calm blue waters
was a force which one day might cause nations to totter, the
overwhelming force which upheld Britain's right in that oft-disputed
sea.

A couple of thousand British sailors were ashore on leave, their white
caps conspicuous in the streets everywhere as they walked orderly in
threes and fours to inspect the town. In the square outside the
Consulate a squad from the flagship were setting up a temporary
band-stand, where the ship's band was to play when evening fell, while
Hutcheson, perspiring in his uniform, drove with the Admiral to make the
calls of courtesy upon the authorities which international etiquette
demanded.

Myself, I had taken a boat out to the _Bulwark_, the great battleship
flying the Admiral's flag, and was sitting on deck with my old friend
Captain Jack Durnford, of the Royal Marines. Each year when the fleet
put into Leghorn we were inseparable, for in long years past, at
Portsmouth, we had been close friends, and now he was able to pay me
annual visits at my Italian home.

He was on duty that morning, therefore could not get ashore till after
luncheon.

"I'll dine with you, of course, to-night, old chap," he said. "And you
must tell me all the news. We're in here for six days, and I was half a
mind to run home. Two of our chaps got leave from the Admiral and left
at three this morning for London--four days in the train and two in
town! Gone to see their sweethearts, I suppose."

The British naval officer in the Mediterranean delights to dash across
Europe for a day at home if he can get leave and funds will allow. It is
generally reckoned that such a trip costs about two pounds an hour while
in London. And yet when a man is away from his _fiancée_ or wife for
three whole years, his anxiety to get back, even for a brief day, is
easily understood. The youngsters, however, go for mere
caprice--whenever they can obtain leave. This is not often, for the
Admiral has very fixed views upon the matter.

"Your time's soon up, isn't it?" I remarked, as I lolled back in the
easy deck-chair, and gazed away at the white port and its background of
purple Apennines.

The dark, good-looking fellow in his smart summer uniform leaned over
the bulwark, and said, with a slight sigh, I thought--

"Yes. This is my last trip to Leghorn, I think. I go back in November,
and I really shan't be sorry. Three years is a long time to be away from
home. You go next week, you say? Lucky devil to be your own master! I
only wish I were. Year after year on this deck grows confoundedly
wearisome, I can tell you, my dear fellow."

Durnford was a man who had written much on naval affairs, and was
accepted as an expert on several branches of the service. The Admiralty
do not encourage officers to write, but in Durnford's case it was
recognized that of naval topics he possessed a knowledge that was of
use, and, therefore, he was allowed to write books and to contribute
critical articles to the service magazines. He had studied the relative
strengths of foreign navies, and by keeping his eyes always open he had,
on many occasions, been able to give valuable information to our naval
_attachés_ at the Embassies. More than once, however, his trenchant
criticism of the action of the naval lords had brought upon his head
rebukes from head-quarters; nevertheless, so universally was his talent
as a naval expert recognized, that to write had never been forbidden him
as it had been to certain others.

"How's Hutcheson?" he asked a moment later, turning and facing me.

"Fit as a fiddle. Just back from his month's leave at home. His wife is
still up in Scotland, however. She can't stand Leghorn in summer."

"No wonder. It's a perfect furnace when the weather begins to stoke up."

"I go as soon as you've sailed. I only stayed because I promised to act
for Frank," I said. "And, by Jove! a funny thing occurred while I was in
charge--a real first-class mystery."

"A mystery--tell me," he exclaimed, suddenly interested.

"Well, a yacht--a pirate yacht, I believe it was--called here."

"A pirate! What do you mean?"

"Well, she was English. Listen, and I'll tell you the whole affair.
It'll be something fresh to tell at mess, for I know how you chaps get
played out of conversation."

"By Jove, yes! Things slump when we get no mail. But go on--I'm
listening," he added, as an orderly came up, saluted, and handed him a
paper.

"Well," I said, "let's cross to the other side. I don't want the sentry
to overhear."

"As you like--but why such mystery?" he asked as we walked together to
the other side of the spick-and-span quarter-deck of the gigantic
battleship.

"You'll understand when I tell you the story." And then, standing
together beneath the awning, I related to my friend the whole of the
curious circumstances, just as I have recorded them in the foregoing
pages.

"Confoundedly funny!" he remarked with his dark eyes fixed upon mine. "A
mystery, by Jove, it is! What name did the yacht bear?"

"The _Lola_."

"What!" he gasped, suddenly turning pale. "The _Lola_? Are you quite
sure it was the _Lola_--_L-O-L-A_?"


"Absolutely certain," I replied. "But why do you ask? Do you happen to
know anything about the craft?"

"Me!" he stammered, and I could see that he had involuntarily betrayed
the truth, yet for some reason he wished to conceal his knowledge from
me. "Me! How should I know anything about such a craft? They were
thieves on board evidently--perhaps pirates, as you say."

"But the name _Lola_ is familiar to you, Jack! I'm sure it is, by your
manner."

He paused a moment, and I could see what a strenuous effort he was
making to avoid betraying knowledge.

"It's--well--" he said hesitatingly, with a rather sickly smile. "It's a
girl's name--a girl I once knew. The name brings back to me certain
memories."

"Pleasant ones--I hope."

"No. Bitter ones--very bitter ones," he said in a hard tone, striding
across the deck and back again, and I saw in his eyes a strange look,
half of anger, half of deep regret.

Was he telling the truth, I wondered? Some tragic romance or other
concerning a woman had, I knew, overshadowed his life in the years
before we had become acquainted. But the real facts he had never
revealed to me. He had never before referred to the bitterness of the
past, although I knew full well that his heart was in secret filled by
some overwhelming sorrow.

Outwardly he was as merry as the other fellows who officered that huge
floating fortress; on board he was a typical smart marine, and on shore
he danced and played tennis and flirted just as vigorously as did the
others. But a heavy heart beat beneath his uniform.

When he returned to where I stood I saw that his face had changed: it
had become drawn and haggard. He bore the appearance of a man who had
been struck a blow that had staggered him, crushing out all life and
hope.

"What's the matter, Jack?" I asked. "Come! Tell me--what ails you?"

"Nothing, my dear old chap," he answered hoarsely. "Really nothing--only
a touch of the blues just for a moment," he added, trying hard to smile.
"It'll pass."

"What I've just told you about that yacht has upset you. You can't deny
it"

He started. His mouth was, I saw, hard set. He knew something concerning
that mysterious craft, but would not tell me.

The sound of a bugle came from the further end of the ship, and
immediately men were scampering along the deck beneath as some order or
other was being obeyed with that precision that characterizes the "handy
man."

"Why are you silent?" I asked slowly, my eyes fixed upon my friend the
officer. "I have told you what I know, and I want to discover the
motive of the visit of those men, and the reason they opened Hutcheson's
safe."

"How can I tell you?" he asked in a strained, unnatural voice.

"I believe you know something concerning them. Come, tell me the truth."

"I admit that I have certain grave suspicions," he said at last,
standing astride with his hands behind his back, his sword trailing on
the white deck. "You say that the yacht was called the _Lola_--painted
gray with a black funnel."

"No, dead white, with a yellow funnel."

"Ah! Of course," he remarked, as though to himself. "They would repaint
and alter her appearance. But the dining saloon. Was there a long carved
oak buffet with a big, heavy cornice with three gilt dolphins in the
center--and were there not dolphins in gilt on the backs of the
chairs--an armorial device?"

"Yes," I cried. "You are right. I remember them! You've surely been on
board her!"

"And there is a ladies' saloon and a small boudoir in pink beyond, while
the smoking-room is entirely of marble for the heat?"

"Exactly--the same yacht, no doubt! But what do you know of her?"

"The captain, who gave his name to you as Mackintosh, is an undersized
American of a rather low-down type?"

"I took him for a Scotsman."

"Because he put on a Scotch accent," he laughed. "He's a man who can
speak a dozen languages brokenly, and pass for an Italian, a German, a
Frenchman, as he wishes."

"And the--the man who gave his name as Philip Hornby?"

Durnford's mouth closed with a snap. He drew a long breath, his eyes
grew fierce, and he bit his lip.

"Ah! I see he is not exactly your friend," I said meaningly.

"You are right, Gordon--he is not my friend," was his slow, meaning
response.

"Then why not be outspoken and tell me all you know concerning him?
Frank Hutcheson is anxious to clear up the mystery because they've
tampered with the Consular seals and things. Besides, it would be put
down to his credit if he solved the affair."

"Well, to tell you the truth, I'm mystified myself. I can't yet discern
their motive."

"But at any rate you know the men," I argued. "You can at least tell us
who they really are."

He shook his head, still disinclined, for some hidden reason, to reveal
the truth to me.

"You saw no woman on board?" he asked suddenly, looking straight into my
eyes.

"No. Hornby told me that he and Chater were alone."

"And yet an hour after you left a man and a woman came ashore and
disappeared! Ah! If we only had a description of that woman it would
reveal much to us."

"She was young and dark-haired, so the detective says. She had a curious
fixed look in her eyes which attracted him, but she wore a thick motor
veil, so that he could not clearly discern her features."

"And her companion?"

"Middle-aged, prematurely gray, with a small dark mustache."

Jack Durnford sighed and stroked his chin.

"Ah! Just as I thought," he exclaimed. "And they were actually here, in
this port, a week ago! What a bitter irony of fate!"

"I don't understand you," I said. "You are so mysterious, and yet you
will tell me nothing!"

"The police, fools that they are, have allowed them to escape, and they
will never be caught now. Ah! you don't know them as I do! They are the
cleverest pair in all Europe. And they have the audacity to call their
craft the _Lola_--the _Lola_, of all names!"

"But as you know who and what the fellows are, you ought, I think, in
common justice to Hutcheson, to tell us something," I complained. "If
they are adventurers, they ought to be traced."

"What can I do--a prisoner here on board?" he argued bitterly. "How can
I act?"

"Leave it all to me. I'm free to travel after them, and find out the
truth if only you will tell me what you know concerning them," I said
eagerly.

"Gordon, let me be frank and open with you, my dear old fellow. I would
tell you everything--everything--if I dared. But I cannot--you
understand!" And his final words seemed to choke him.

I stood before him, open-mouthed in astonishment.

"You really mean--well, that you are in fear of them--eh?" I whispered.

He nodded slowly in the affirmative, adding: "To tell you the truth
would be to bring upon myself a swift, relentless vengeance that would
overwhelm and crush me. Ah! my dear fellow, you do not know--you cannot
dream--what brought those desperate men into this port. I can guess--I
can guess only too well--but I can only tell you that if you ever do
discover the terrible truth--which I fear is unlikely--you will solve
one of the strangest and most remarkable mysteries of modern times."

"What does the mystery concern?" I asked, in breathless eagerness.

"It concerns a woman."




CHAPTER III

THE HOUSE "OVER THE WATER"


The Mediterranean Squadron, that magnificent display of naval force that
is the guarantee of peace in Europe, after a week of gay festivities in
Leghorn, had sailed for Gaeta, while I, glad to escape from the glaring
heat, found myself back once more in dear old London.

One passes one's time in the south well enough in winter, but after a
year even the most ardent lover of Italy longs to return to his own
people, be it ever for so brief a space. Exile for a whole year in any
continental town is exile indeed; therefore, although I lived in Italy
for choice, I, like so many other Englishmen, always managed to spend a
month or two in summer in our temperate if much maligned climate.

London, the same dear, dusty old London, only perhaps more dear and more
dusty than ever, was my native city; hence I always spent a few weeks in
it, even though all the world might be absent in the country, or at the
seaside.

I had idled away a pleasant month up in Buxton, and from there had gone
north to the Lakes, and it was one hot evening in mid-August that I
found myself again in London, crossing St. James's Square from the
Sports Club, where I had dined, walking towards Pall Mall. Darkness had
just fallen, and there was that stifling oppression in the air that
fore-tokened a thunderstorm. The club was not gay with life and
merriment as it is in the season, for everyone was away, many of the
rooms were closed for re-decoration, and most of the furniture swathed
in linen.

I was on my way to pay a visit to a lady who lived up at Hampstead, a
friend of my late mother's, and had just turned into Pall Mall, when a
voice at my elbow suddenly exclaimed in Italian--

"Ah, signore!--why, actually, my padrone!"

And looking round, I saw a thin-faced man of about thirty, dressed in
neat but rather shabby black, whom I instantly recognized as a man who
had been my servant in Leghorn for two years, after which he had left to
better himself.

"Why, Olinto!" I exclaimed, surprised, as I halted. "You--in London--eh?
Well, and how are you getting on?"

"Most excellently, signore," he answered in broken English, smiling.
"But it is so pleasant for me to see my generous padrone again. What
fortune it is that I should pass here at this very moment!"

"Where are you working?" I inquired.

"At the Restaurant Milano, in Oxford Street--only a small place, but we
gain discreetly, so I must not complain. I live over in Lambeth, and am
on my way home."

"I heard you married after you left me. Is that true?"

"Yes, signore. I married Armida, who was in your service when I first
entered it. You remember her? Ah, well!" he added, sighing. "Poor thing!
I regret to say she is very ill indeed. She cannot stand your English
climate. The doctor says she will die if she remains here. Yet what can
I do? If we go back to Italy we shall only starve." And I saw that he
was in deep distress, and that mention of his ailing wife had aroused
within him bitter thoughts.

Olinto Santini walked back at my side in the direction of Trafalgar
Square, answering the questions I put to him. He had been a good,
hard-working servant, and I was glad to see him again. When he left me
he had gone as steward on one of the Anchor Line boats between Naples
and New York, and that was the last I had heard of him until I found him
there in London, a waiter at a second-rate restaurant.

When I tried to slip some silver into his hand he refused to take it,
and with a merry laugh said--

"I wonder if you would be offended, signore, if I told you of something
for which I had been longing and longing?"

"Not at all."

"Well, the signore smokes our Tuscan cigars. I wonder if by chance you
have one? We cannot get them in London, you know."

I felt in my pocket, laughing, and discovered that I had a couple of
those long thin penny cigars which I always smoke in Italy, and which
are so dear to the Tuscan palate. These I handed him, and he took them
with delight as the greatest delicacy I could have offered him. Poor
fellow! As an exiled Italian he clung to every little trifle that
reminded him of his own beloved country.

When we halted before the National Gallery prior to parting I made some
further inquiries regarding Armida, the black-eyed, good-looking
housemaid whom he had married.

"Ah, signore!" he responded in a voice choked with emotion, dropping
into Italian. "It is the one great sorrow of my life. I work hard from
early morning until late at night, but what is the use when I see my
poor wife gradually fading away before my very eyes? The doctor says
that she cannot possibly live through the next winter. Ah! how delighted
the poor girl would be if she could see the padrone once again!"

I felt sorry for him. Armida had been a good servant, and had served me
well for nearly three years. Old Rosina, my housekeeper, had often
regretted that she had been compelled to leave to attend to her aged
mother. The latter, he told me, had died, and afterwards he had married
her. There is more romance and tragedy in the lives of the poor Italians
in London than London ever suspects. We are too apt to regard the
Italian as a bloodthirsty person given to the unlawful use of the knife,
whereas, as a whole, the Italian colony in London is a hard-working,
thrifty, and law-abiding one, very different, indeed, to those colonies
of aliens from Northern Europe, who are so continually bringing filth,
disease, and immorality into the East End, and are a useless incubus in
an already over-populated city.

He spoke so wistfully that his wife might see me once more that, having
nothing very particular to do that evening, and feeling a deep sympathy
for the poor fellow in his trouble, I resolved to accompany him to his
house and see whether I could not, in some slight manner, render him a
little help.

He thanked me profusely when I consented to go with him.

"Ah, signor padrone!" he said gratefully, "she will be so delighted. It
is so very good of you."

We hailed a hansom and drove across Westminster Bridge to the address he
gave--a gloomy back street off the York Road, one of those narrow, grimy
thoroughfares into which the sun never shines. Ah, how often do the poor
Italians, those children of the sun, pine and die when shut up in our
dismal, sordid streets! Dirt and squalor do not affect them; it is the
damp and cold and lack of sunshine that so very soon proves fatal.

A low-looking, evil-faced fellow opened the door to us and growled
acquaintance with Olinto, who, striking a match, ascended the worn,
carpetless stairs before me, apologizing for passing before me, and
saying in Italian--

"We live at the top, signore, because it is cheaper and the air is
better."

"Quite right," I said. "Quite right. Go on." And I thought I heard my
cab driving away.

It was a gloomy, forbidding, unlighted place into which I would
certainly have hesitated to enter had not my companion been my trusted
servant. I instinctively disliked the look of the fellow who had opened
the door. He was one of those hulking loafers of the peculiarly Lambeth
type. Yet the alien poor, I recollected, cannot choose where they shall
reside.

Contrary to my expectations, the sitting-room we entered on the top
floor was quite comfortably furnished, clean and respectable, even
though traces of poverty were apparent. A cheap lamp was burning upon
the table, but the apartment was unoccupied.

Olinto, in surprise, passed into the adjoining room, returning a moment
later, exclaiming--

"Armida must have gone out to get something. Or perhaps she is with the
people, a compositor and his wife, who live on the floor below. They are
very good to her. I'll go and find her. Accommodate yourself with a
chair, signore." And he drew the best chair forward for me, and dusted
it with his handkerchief.

I allowed him to go and fetch her, rather surprised that she should be
well enough to get about after all he had told me concerning her
illness. Yet consumption does not keep people in bed until its final
stages.

As I stood there, gazing round the room, I could not well distinguish
its furthermost corners, for the lamp bore a shade of green paste-board,
which threw a zone of light upon the table, and left the remainder of
the room in darkness. When, however, my eyes grew accustomed to the dim
light, I discerned that the place was dusty and somewhat disordered. The
sofa was, I saw, a folding iron bedstead with greasy old cushions, while
the carpet was threadbare and full of holes. When I drew the old rep
curtains to look out of the window, I found that the shutters were
closed, which I thought unusual for a room so high up as that was.

Olinto returned in a few moments, saying that his wife had evidently
gone to do some shopping in the Lower-Marsh, for it is the habit of the
denizens of that locality to go "marketing" in the evening among the
costermongers' stalls that line so many of the thoroughfares. Perishable
commodities, the overplus of the markets and shops, are cheaper at night
than in the morning.

"I hope you are not pressed for time, signore?" he said apologetically.
"But, of course, the poor girl does not know the surprise awaiting her.
She will surely not be long."

"Then I'll wait," I said, and flung myself back into the chair he had
brought forward for me.

"I have nothing to offer you, signer padrone," he said, with a laugh. "I
did not expect a visitor, you know."

"No, no, Olinto. I've only just had dinner. But tell me how you have
fared since you left me."

"Ah!" he laughed bitterly. "I had many ups and downs before I found
myself here in London. The sea did not suit me--neither did the work.
They put me in the emigrants' quarters, and consequently I could gain
nothing. The other stewards were Neapolitans, therefore, because I was a
Tuscan, they relegated me to the worst post. Ah, signore, you don't know
what it is to serve those emigrants! I made two trips, then returned and
married Armida. I called on you, but Tito said you were in London. At
first I got work at a café in Viareggio, but when the season ended, and
I was thrown out of employment, I managed to work my way from Genoa to
London. My first place was scullion in a restaurant in Tottenham Court
Road, and then I became waiter in the beer-hall at the Monico, and
managed to save sufficient to send Armida the money to join me here.
Afterwards I went to the Milano, and I hope to get into one of the big
hotels very soon--or perhaps the grill-room at the Carlton. I have a
friend who is there, and they make lots of money--four or five pounds
every week in tips, they say."

"I'll see what I can do for you," I said. "I know several hotel-managers
who might have a vacancy."

"Ah, signore!" he cried, filled with gratification. "If you only would!
A word from you would secure me a good position. I can work, that you
know--and I do work. I will work--for her sake."

"I have promised you," I said briefly.

"And how can I sufficiently thank you?" he cried, standing before me,
while in his eyes I thought I detected a strange wild look, such as I
had never seen there before.

"You served me well, Olinto," I replied, "and when I discover real
sterling honesty I endeavor to appreciate it. There is, alas! very
little of it in this world."

"Yes," he said in a hoarse voice, his manner suddenly changing. "You
have to-night shown me, signore, that you are my friend, and I will, in
return, show you that I am yours." And suddenly grasping both my hands,
he pulled me from the chair in which I was sitting, at the same time
asking in a low intense whisper: "Do you always carry a revolver here in
England, as you do in Italy?"

"Yes," I answered in surprise at his action and his question. "Why?"

"Because there is danger here," he answered in the same low earnest
tone. "Get your weapon ready. You may want it."

"I don't understand," I said, feeling my handy Colt in my back pocket to
make sure it was there.

"Forget what I have said--all--all that I have told you to-night, sir,"
he said. "I have not explained the whole truth. You are in peril--in
deadly peril!"

"How?" I exclaimed breathlessly, surprised at his extraordinary change
of manner and his evident apprehension lest something should befall me.

"Wait, and you shall see," he whispered. "But first tell me, signore,
that you will forgive me for the part I have played in this dastardly
affair. I, like yourself, fell innocently into the hands of your
enemies."

"My enemies! Who are they?"

"They are unknown, and for the present must remain so. But if you doubt
your peril, watch--" and taking the rusty fire-tongs from the grate he
carefully placed them on end in front of the deep old armchair in which
I had sat, and then allowed them to fall against the edge of the seat,
springing quickly back as he did so.

In an instant a bright blue flash shot through the place, and the irons
fell aside, fused and twisted out of all recognition.

I stood aghast, utterly unable for the moment to sufficiently realize
how narrowly I had escaped death.

"Look! See here, behind!" cried the Italian, directing my attention to
the back legs of the chair, where, on bending with the lamp, I saw, to
my surprise, that two wires were connected, and ran along the floor and
out of the window, while concealed beneath the ragged carpet, in front
of the chair, was a thin plate of steel, whereon my feet had rested.

Those who had so ingeniously enticed me to that gloomy house of death
had connected up the overhead electric light main with that
innocent-looking chair, and from some unseen point had been able to
switch on a current of sufficient voltage to kill fifty men.

I stood stock-still, not daring to move lest I might come into contact
with some hidden wire, the slightest touch of which must bring instant
death upon me.

"Your enemies prepared this terrible trap for you," declared the man who
was once my trusted servant. "When I entered into the affair I was not
aware that it was to be fatal. They gave me no inkling of their
dastardly intention. But there is no time to admit of explanations now,
signore," he added breathlessly, in a low desperate voice. "Say that you
will not prejudge me," he pleaded earnestly.

"I will not prejudge you until I've heard your explanation," I said. "I
certainly owe my life to you to-night."

"Then quick! Fly from this house this instant. If you are stopped, then
use your revolver. Don't hesitate. In a moment they will be here upon
you."

"But who are they, Olinto? You must tell me," I cried in desperation.

"_Dio!_ Go! Go!" he cried, pushing me violently towards the door. "Fly,
or we shall both die--both of us! Run downstairs. I must make feint of
dashing after you."

I turned, and seeing his desperate eagerness, precipitately fled, while
he ran down behind me, uttering fierce imprecations in Italian, as
though I had escaped him.

A man in the narrow dark passage attempted to trip me up as I ran, but I
fired point blank at him, and gaining the door unlocked it, and an
instant later found myself out in the street.

It was the narrowest escape from death that I had ever had in all my
life--surely the strangest and most remarkable adventure. What, I
wondered, did it mean?

Next morning I searched up and down Oxford Street for the Restaurant
Milano, but could not find it. I asked shopkeepers, postmen, and
policemen; I examined the London Directory at the bar of the Oxford
Music Hall, and made every inquiry possible. But all was to no purpose.
No one knew of such a place. There were restaurants in plenty in Oxford
Street, from the Frascati down to the humble coffeeshop, but nobody had
ever heard of the "Milano."

Even Olinto had played me false!

I was filled with chagrin, for I had trusted him as honest, upright, and
industrious; and was puzzled to know the reason he had deceived me, and
why he had enticed me to the very brink of the grave.

He had told me that he himself had fallen into the trap laid by my
enemies, and yet he had steadfastly refused to tell me who they were!
The whole thing was utterly inexplicable.

I drove over to Lambeth and wandered through the maze of mean streets
off the York Road, yet for the life of me I could not decide into which
house I had been taken. There were a dozen which seemed to me that they
might be the identical house from which I had so narrowly escaped with
my life.

Gradually it became impressed upon me that my ex-servant had somehow
gained knowledge that I was in London, that he had watched my exit from
the club, and that all his pitiful story regarding Armida was false. He
was the envoy of my unknown enemies, who had so ingeniously and so
relentlessly plotted my destruction.

That I had enemies I knew quite well. The man who believes he has not is
an arrant fool. There is no man breathing who has not an enemy, from the
pauper in the workhouse to the king in his automobile. But the unseen
enemy is always the more dangerous; hence my deep apprehensive
reflections that day as I walked those sordid back streets "over the
water," as the Cockney refers to the district between those two main
arteries of traffic, the Waterloo and Westminster Bridge Roads.

My unknown enemies had secured the services of Olinto in their dastardly
plot to kill me. With what motive?

I wondered as I crossed Waterloo Bridge to the Strand, whether Olinto
Santini would again approach me and make the promised explanation. I had
given my word not to prejudge him until he revealed to me the truth. Yet
I could not, in the circumstances, repose entire confidence in him.

When one's enemies are unknown, the feeling of apprehension is always
much greater, for in the imagination danger lurks in every corner, and
every action of a friend covers the ruse of a suspected enemy.

That day I did my business in the city with a distrust of everyone, not
knowing whether I was not followed or whether those who sought my life
were not plotting some other equally ingenious move whereby I might go
innocently to my death. I endeavored to discover Olinto by every
possible means during those stifling days that followed. The heat of
London was, to me, more oppressive than the fiery sunshine of the
old-world Tuscany, and everyone who could be out of town had left for
the country or the sea.

The only trace I found of the Italian was that he was registered at the
office of the International Society of Hotel Servants, in Shaftesbury
Avenue, as being employed at Gatti's Adelaide Gallery, but on inquiry
there I found he had left more than a year before, and none of his
fellow-waiters knew his whereabouts.

Thus being defeated in every inquiry, and my business at last concluded
in London, I went up to Dumfries on a duty visit which I paid annually
to my uncle, Sir George Little. Having known Dumfries since my earliest
boyhood, and having spent some years of my youth there, I had many
friends in the vicinity, for Sir George and my aunt were very popular in
the county and moved in the best set.

Each time I returned from abroad I was always a welcome guest at
Greenlaw, as their place outside the city of Burns was called, and this
occasion proved no exception, for the country houses of Dumfries are
always gay in August in prospect of the shooting.

"Some new people have taken Rannoch Castle. Rather nice they seem,"
remarked my aunt as we were sitting together at luncheon the day after
my arrival. "Their name is Leithcourt, and they've asked me to drive you
over there to tennis this afternoon."

"I'm not much of a player, you know, aunt. In Italy we don't believe in
athletics. But if it's out of politeness, of course, I'll go."

"Very well," she said. "Then I'll order the victoria for three."

"There are several nice girls there, Gordon," remarked my uncle
mischievously. "You have a good time, so don't think you are going to be
bored."

"No fear of that," was my answer. And at three o'clock Sir George, his
wife, and myself set out for that fine old historic castle that stands
high on the Bognie, overlooking the Cairn waters beyond Dunscore, one of
the strongholds of the Black Douglas in those turbulent days of long
ago, and now a splendid old residence with a big shoot which was
sometimes let for the season at a very high rent by its aristocratic if
somewhat impecunious owner.

We could see its great round towers, standing grim and gray on the
hillside commanding the whole of the valley, long before we approached
it, and when we drove into the grounds we found a gay party in summer
toilettes assembled on the ancient bowling-green, now transformed into a
modern tennis-lawn.

Mrs. Leithcourt and her husband, a tall, thin, gray-headed, well-dressed
man, both came forward to greet us, and after a few introductions I
joined a set at tennis. They were a merry crowd. The Leithcourts were
entertaining a large house-party, and their hospitality was on a scale
quite in keeping with the fine old place they rented.

Tea was served on the lawn by the footmen, and afterwards, being tired
of the game, I found myself strolling with Muriel Leithcourt, a bright,
dark-eyed girl with tightly-bound hair, and wearing a cotton blouse and
flannel tennis skirt.

I was apologizing for my terribly bad play, explaining that I had no
practice out in Italy, whereupon she said--

"I know Italy slightly. I was in Florence and Naples with mother last
season."

And then we began to discuss pictures and sculptures and the sights of
Italy generally. I discerned from her remarks that she had traveled
widely; indeed, she told me that both her father and mother were never
happier than when moving from place to place in search of variety and
distraction. We had entered the huge paneled hall of the Castle, and had
passed up the quaint old stone staircase to the long banqueting hall
with its paneled oak ceiling, which in these modern days had been
transformed into a bright, pleasant drawing-room, from the windows of
which was presented a marvelous view over the lovely Nithsdale and
across to the heather-clad hills beyond.

It was pleasant lounging there in the cool old room after the hot
sunshine outside, and as I gazed around the place I noted how much more
luxurious and tasteful it now was to what it had been in the days when I
had visited its owner several years before.

"We are awfully glad to be up here," my pretty companion was saying. "We
had such a busy season in London." And then she went on to describe the
Court ball, and two or three of the most notable functions about which I
had read in my English paper beside the Mediterranean.

She attracted me on account of her bright vivacity, quick wit and keen
sense of humor, therefore I sat listening to her pleasant chatter.
Exiled as I was in a foreign land, I seldom spoke English save with
Hutcheson, the Consul, and even then we generally spoke Italian if there
were others present, in order that our companions should understand.
Therefore her gossip interested me, and as the golden sunset flooded the
handsome old room I sat listening to her, inwardly admiring her innate
grace and handsome countenance.

I had no idea who or what her father was--whether a wealthy
manufacturer, like so many who take expensive shoots and give big
entertainments in order to edge their way into Society by its back door,
or whether he was a gentleman of means and of good family. I rather
guessed the latter, from his gentlemanly bearing and polished manner.
His appearance, tall and erect, was that of a retired officer, and his
clean-cut face was one of marked distinction.

I was telling my pretty companion something of my own life, how, because
I loved Italy so well, I lived in Tuscany in preference to living in
England, and how each year I came home for a month or two to visit my
relations and to keep in touch with things.

Suddenly she said--

"I was once in Leghorn for a few hours. We were yachting in the
Mediterranean. I love the sea--and yachting is such awfully good fun, if
you only get decent weather."

The mention of yachting brought back to my mind the visit of the _Lola_
and its mysterious sequel.

"Your father has a yacht, then?" I remarked, with as little concern as I
could.

"Yes. The _Iris_. My uncle is cruising on her up the Norwegian Fiords.
For us it is a change to be here, because we are so often afloat. We
went across to New York in her last year and had a most delightful
time--except for one bad squall which made us all a little bit nervous.
But Moyes is such an excellent captain that I never fear. The crew are
all North Sea fishermen--father will engage nobody else. I don't blame
him."

"So you must have made many long voyages, and seen many odd corners of
the world, Miss Leithcourt?" I remarked, my interest in her increasing,
for she seemed so extremely intelligent and well-informed.

"Oh, yes. We've been to Mexico, and to Panama, besides Morocco, Egypt,
and the West Coast of Africa."

"And you've actually landed at Leghorn!" I remarked.

"Yes, but we didn't stay there more than an hour--to send a telegram, I
think it was. Father said there was nothing to see there. He and I went
ashore, and I must say I was rather disappointed."

"You are quite right. The town itself is ugly and uninteresting. But the
outskirts--San Jacopo, Ardenza and Antigniano are all delightful. It was
unfortunate that you did not see them. Was it long ago when you put in
there?"

"Not very long. I really don't recollect the exact date," was her reply.
"We were on our way home from Alexandria."

"Have you ever, in any of the ports you've been, seen a yacht called the
_Lola_?" I asked eagerly, for it occurred to me that perhaps she might
be able to give me information.

"The _Lola_!" she gasped, and instantly her face changed. A flush
overspread her cheeks, succeeded next moment by a death-like pallor.
"The _Lola_!" she repeated in a strange, hoarse voice, at the same time
endeavoring strenuously not to exhibit any apprehension. "No. I have
never heard of any such a vessel. Is she a steam-yacht? Who's her
owner?"

I regarded her in amazement and suspicion, for I saw that mention of the
name had aroused within her some serious misgiving. That look in her
dark eyes as they fixed themselves upon me was one of distinct and
unspeakable terror.

What could she possibly know concerning the mysterious craft?

"I don't know the owner's name," I said, still affecting not to have
noticed her alarm and apprehension. "The vessel ran aground at the
Meloria, a dangerous shoal outside Leghorn, and through the stupidity of
her captain was very nearly lost."

"Yes?" she gasped, in a half-whisper, bending to me eagerly, unable to
sufficiently conceal the terrible anxiety consuming her. "And you--did
you go aboard her?"

"Yes," was the only word I uttered.

A silence fell between us, and as my eyes fixed themselves upon her, I
saw that from her handsome mobile countenance all the light and life had
suddenly gone out, and I knew that she was in secret possession of the
key to that remarkable enigma that so puzzled me.

Of a sudden the door opened, and a voice cried gayly--

"Why, I've been looking everywhere for you, Muriel. Why are you hidden
here? Aren't you coming?"

We both turned, and as she did so a low cry of blank dismay
involuntarily escaped her.

Next instant I sprang to my feet. The reason of her cry was apparent,
for there, in the full light of the golden sunset streaming through the
long open windows, stood a broad-shouldered, fair-bearded man in tennis
flannels and a Panama hat--the fugitive I knew as Philip Hornby!

I faced him, speechless.




CHAPTER IV

IN WHICH THE MYSTERY INCREASES


Neither of us spoke. Equally surprised at the unexpected encounter, we
stood facing each other dumbfounded.

Hornby started quickly as soon as his eyes fell upon me, and his face
became blanched to the lips, while Muriel Leithcourt, quick to notice
the sudden change in him, rose and introduced us in as calm a voice as
she could command.

"I don't think you are acquainted," she said to me with a smile. "This
is Mr. Martin Woodroffe--Mr. Gordon Gregg."

I bowed to him in sudden resolve to remain silent in pretense that I
doubted whether the man before me was actually my host of the _Lola_. I
intended to act as though I was not sufficiently convinced to openly
express my doubt. Therefore we bowed, exchanging greetings as strangers,
while, carefully watching, I saw how greatly the minds of both were
relieved. They shot meaning glances at each other, and then, as though
reassured that I was mystified and uncertain, the man who called himself
Woodroffe explained to my companion------

"I've been over to Newton Stewart with Fred all day, and only got back a
quarter of an hour ago. Aren't you playing any more to-day?"

"I think not," was her reply. "We've been out there the whole afternoon,
and I'm rather tired. But they're still on the lawn. You can surely get
a game with someone."

"If you don't play, I shan't. I returned to keep the promise I made
this morning," he laughed, standing before the big open fireplace,
holding his tennis racquet behind his back.

I examined his countenance, and was more than ever convinced that he was
actually the man who gave me the name of Hornby and the false address in
Somerset. The pair seemed to be on familiar terms, and I wondered
whether they were engaged. In any case, the man seemed quite at home
there.

As he chatted with the daughter of the house, he cast a quick, covert
glance at me, and then darted a meaning look at her--a look of renewed
confidence, as though he felt that he had successfully averted any
suspicions I might have held.

We talked of the prospects of the grouse and the salmon, and from his
remarks he seemed to be as keen at sport as he had once made out himself
to be at yachting.

"My friend Leithcourt is awfully fortunate in getting such a splendid
old place as this. On every hand I hear glowing accounts of the number
of birds. The place has been well preserved in the past, and there's
plenty of good cover."

"Yes," I said. "Gilrae, the owner, is a keen sportsman, and before he
became so hard up he spent a lot of money on the estate, which, I
believe, has always been considered one of the very best in the
southwest. There's salmon, they say, down in the Glen yonder--but I've
never tried for any."

"Certainly there is. I've seen several. I hope to try one of these days.
The Glen is deep and shady--an ideal place for fish. The only
disappointment here, as far as I can make out, is the very few head of
black-game."

"Yes, but every year they are getting rarer and rarer in this part of
Scotland. A really fine black-cock is quite an event nowadays," I said.

While we were talking, or rather while I was carefully watching the
rapid working of his mind, Leithcourt himself entered and joined us. He
had been playing tennis, and had come in to rest and cool.

Host and guest were evidently on the most intimate terms. Leithcourt
addressed him as "Martin," and began to relate a quarrel which his
head-gamekeeper had had that day with one of the small farmers on the
estate regarding the killing of some rabbits. And while they were
talking Muriel suggested that we should stroll down to the tennis-courts
again, an invitation which, much as I regretted leaving the two men, I
was bound to accept.

It seemed as though she wished purposely to take me away from that man's
presence, fearing that by remaining there longer my suspicions might
become confirmed. She was acting in conjunction with the man whom I had
known as Hornby.

There were still a good many people watching the game, for it was
pleasant in those old-world gardens in the sunset hour. The dried-up
moat was now transformed into a garden filled with rhododendrons and
bright azaleas, while the high ancient beech-hedges, the quaint old
sundial with its motto: "Each time ye shadowe turneth ys one daye nearer
unto dethe," and the old stone balustrades gray with lichen, all spoke
mutely of those glorious days when the fierce horsemen of the Lairds of
Rannoch were feared across the Border, and when many a prisoner of the
Black Douglas had pined and died in those narrow stone chambers in the
grim north tower that still stood high above.

Among the party strolling and lounging there prior to departure were
quite a number of people I knew, people who had shooting-boxes in the
vicinity and were my uncle's friends. In Scotland there is always a
hearty hospitality among the sporting folk, and the laws of caste are
far less rigorous than they are in England.

I was standing chatting with two ladies who were about to take leave of
their hostess, when Leithcourt returned, but alone. Hornby had not
accompanied him. Was it because he feared to again meet me?

In order to ascertain something regarding the man who had so
mysteriously fled from Leghorn, I managed by the exercise of a little
diplomacy to sit on the lawn with a young married woman named Tennant,
wife of a cavalry captain, who was one of the house-party. After a
little time I succeeded in turning the conversation to her fellow
guests, and more particularly to the man I knew as Hornby.

"Oh! Mr. Woodroffe is most amusing," declared the bright little woman.
"He's always playing some practical joke or other. After dinner he is
usually the life and soul of our party."

"Yes," I said, "I like what little I have seen of him. He's a very good
fellow, I should say. I've heard that he's engaged to Muriel," I
hazarded. "Is that true?"

"Of course. They've been engaged nearly a year, but he's been abroad
until quite lately. He is rather close about his own affairs, and never
talks about his travels and adventures, although one day Mr. Leithcourt
declared that his hairbreadth escapes would make a most exciting book if
ever written."

"Leithcourt and he are evidently most intimate friends."

"Oh, quite inseparable!" she laughed. "And the other man who is always
with them is that short, stout, red-faced old fellow standing over there
with the lady in pale blue, Sir Ughtred Gardner. Mr. Woodroffe has
nicknamed him 'Sir Putrid.'" And we both laughed. "Of course, don't say
I said so," she whispered. "They don't call him that to his face, but
it's so easy to make a mistake in his name when he's not within hearing.
We women don't care for him, so the nickname just fits."

And she gossiped on, telling me much that I desired to know regarding
the new tenant of Rannoch and his friends, and more especially of that
man who had first introduced himself to me in the Consulate at Leghorn.

Half an hour later my uncle's carriage was announced, and I left with
the distinct impression that there was some deep mystery surrounding the
Leithcourts. What it was, however, I could not, for the life of me, make
out. Perhaps it was Philip Leithcourt's intimate relation with the man
who had so cleverly deceived me that incited my curiosity concerning
him; perhaps it was that mysterious intuition, that curious presage of
evil that sometimes comes to a man as warning of impending peril.
Whatever the reason, I had become filled with grave apprehensions. The
mystery grew deeper day by day, and was inexplicable.

During the week that followed I sought to learn all I could regarding
the new people at the castle.

"They are taken up everywhere," declared my aunt when I questioned her.
"Of course, we knew very little of them, except that they had a shoot up
near Fort William two years ago, and that they have a town house in
Green Street. They are evidently rather smart folks. Don't you think
so?"

"Judging from their house-party, yes," I responded. "They are about as
gay a crowd as one could find north of Carlisle just at present."

"Exactly. There are some well-known people among them, too," said my
aunt. "I've asked them over to-morrow afternoon, and they've accepted."

"Excellent!" I exclaimed, for I wanted an opportunity for another chat
with the dark-eyed girl who was engaged to the man whose alias was
Hornby. I particularly desired to ascertain the reason of her fear when
I had mentioned the _Lola_, and whether she possessed any knowledge of
Hylton Chater.

The opportunity came to me in due course, for next afternoon the Rannoch
party drove over in two large brakes, and with other people from the
neighborhood and a band from Dumfries, my aunt's grounds presented a gay
and animated scene. There was the usual tennis and croquet, while some
of the men enjoyed a little putting on the excellent course my uncle, a
golf enthusiast, had recently laid down.

As I expected, Woodroffe did not accompany the party. Mrs. Leithcourt, a
slightly fussy little woman, apologized for his absence, explaining that
he had been recalled to London suddenly a few days before, but was
returning to Rannoch again at the end of the week.

"We couldn't afford to lose him," she declared to my aunt. "He is so
awfully humorous--his droll sayings and antics keep us in a perfect roar
each night at dinner. He's such a perfect mimic."

I turned away and strolled with Muriel, pleading an excuse to show her
my uncle's beautiful grounds, not a whit less picturesque than those of
the castle, and perhaps rather better kept.

"I only heard yesterday of your engagement, Miss Leithcourt," I remarked
presently when we were alone. "Allow me to offer my best
congratulations. When you introduced me to Mr. Woodroffe the other day I
had no idea that he was to be your husband."

She glanced at me quickly, and I saw in her dark eyes a look of
suspicion. Then she flushed slightly, and laughing uneasily said, in a
blank, hard voice--

"It's very good of you, Mr. Gregg, to wish me all sorts of such pleasant
things."

"And when is the happy event to take place?"

"The date is not exactly fixed--early next year, I believe," and I
thought she sighed.

"And you will probably spend a good deal of time yachting?" I suggested,
my eyes fixed upon her in order to watch the result of my pointed
remark. But she controlled herself perfectly.

"I love the sea," she responded briefly, and her eyes were set straight
before her.

"Mr. Woodroffe has gone up to town, your mother says."

"Yes. He received a wire, and had to leave immediately. It was an awful
bore, for we had arranged to go for a picnic to Dundrennan Abbey
yesterday."

"But he'll be back here again, won't he?"

"I really don't know. It seems quite uncertain. I had a letter this
morning which said he might have to go over to Hamburg on business,
instead of coming up to us again."

There was disappointment in her voice, and yet at the same time I could
not fail to recognize how the man to whom she was engaged had fled from
Scotland because of my presence.

How I longed to ask her point-blank what she really knew of the
yachtsman who was shrouded in so much mystery. Yet by betraying any
undue anxiety I should certainly negative all my efforts to solve the
puzzling enigma, therefore I was compelled to remain content with asking
ingeniously disguised questions and drawing my own conclusions from her
answers.

As we passed along those graveled walks it somehow became vividly
impressed upon me that her marriage was being forced upon her by her
parents. Her manner was that of one who was concealing some strange and
terrible secret which she feared might be revealed. There was a distant
look of unutterable terror in those dark eyes as though she existed in
some constant and ever-present dread. Of course she told me nothing of
her own feelings or affections, yet I recognized in both her words and
her bearing a curious apathy--a want of the real enthusiasm of
affection. Woodroffe, much her senior, was her father's friend, and it
therefore seemed to me more than likely that Leithcourt was pressing a
matrimonial alliance upon his daughter for some ulterior motive. In the
mad hurry for place, power, and wealth, men relentlessly sell their
daughters in the matrimonial market, and ambitious mothers scheme and
intrigue for their own aggrandizement at sacrifice of their daughter's
happiness more often than the public ever dream. Tragedy is, alas!
written upon the face of many a bride whose portrait appears in the
fashion-papers and whose toilette is so faithfully chronicled in the
paragraph beneath. Indeed, the girl in Society who is allowed her own
free choice in the matter of a husband is, alas! nowadays the exception,
for parents who want to "get on" up the social scale have found that
pretty daughters are a marketable commodity, and many a man has been
placed "on his legs," both financially and socially, by his son-in-law.
Hence the marriage of convenience is fast becoming common, while in the
same ratio the divorce petitions are unfortunately on the increase.

I read tragedy in the dark luminous eyes of Muriel Leithcourt. I knew
that her young heart was over-burdened by some secret sorrow or guilty
knowledge that she would reveal to me if she dared. Her own words told
me that she was perplexed; that she longed to confide and seek advice
of someone, yet by reason of some hidden and untoward circumstance her
lips were sealed.

I tried to question her further regarding Woodroffe, of what profession
he followed and of his past.

But she evidently suspected me, for I had unfortunately mentioned the
_Lola_.

She wanted to speak to me in confidence, and yet she would reveal to me
nothing--absolutely nothing.

Martin Woodroffe did not rejoin the house-party at Rannoch.

Although I remained the guest of my uncle much longer than I intended,
indeed right through the shooting season, in order to watch the
Leithcourts, yet as far as we could judge they were extremely well-bred
people and very hospitable.

We exchanged a good many visits and dinners, and while my uncle several
times invited Leithcourt and his friends to his shoot with _al fresco_
luncheon, which the ladies joined, the tenant of Rannoch always invited
us back in return.

Thus I gained many opportunities of talking with Muriel, and of watching
her closely. I had the reputation of being a confirmed bachelor, and on
account of that it seemed that she was in no way averse to my
companionship. She could handle a rook-rifle as well as any woman, and
was really a very fair shot. Therefore we often found ourselves alone
tramping across the wide open moorland, or along those delightful glens
of the Nithsdale, glorious in the autumn tints of their luxurious
foliage.

Her father, on the other hand, seemed to view me with considerable
suspicion, and I could easily discern that I was only asked to Rannoch
because it was impossible to invite my uncle without including myself.

Leithcourt, who perhaps thought I was courting his daughter, was ever
endeavoring to avoid me, and would never allow me to walk with him
alone. Why? I wondered. Did he fear me? Had Woodroffe told him of our
strange encounter in Leghorn?

His pronounced antipathy towards me caused me to watch him
surreptitiously, and more closely than perhaps I should otherwise have
done. He was a man of gloomy mood, and often he would leave his guests
and take walks alone, musing and brooding. On several occasions I
followed him in secret, and found to my surprise that although he made
long detours in various directions, yet he always arrived at the same
spot at the same hour--five o'clock.

The place where he halted was on the edge of a dark wood on the brow of
a hill about three miles from Rannoch--a good place to get woodpigeon,
as they came to roost. It was fully two miles across the hills from the
high road to Moniaive, and from the break the gray wall where he was in
the habit of sitting to rest and smoke, there stretched the beautiful
panorama of Loch Urr and the heatherclad hills beyond.

Leithcourt never went direct to the place, but always so timed his walks
that he arrived just at five, and remained there smoking cigarettes
until half-past, as though awaiting the arrival of some person he
expected. Once or twice his guests suggested shooting pigeons at
sundown, but he always had some excuse for opposing the proposal, and
thus the party, unsuspecting the reason, were kept away from that
particular lonely spot.

In my youth I had sat many a quiet hour there in the darkening gloom and
shot many a pigeon, therefore I knew the wood well, and was able to
watch the tenant of Rannoch from points where he least suspected the
presence of another.

Once, when I was alone with Muriel, I mentioned her father's capacity
for walking alone, whereupon she said--

"Oh, yes, he was always fond of walking. He used to take me with him
when we first came here, but he always went so far that I refused to go
any more."

She never once mentioned Woodroffe. I allowed her plenty of opportunity
for doing so, chaffing her about her forthcoming marriage in order that
she might again refer to him. But never did his name pass her lips. I
understood that he had gone abroad--that was all.

Often when alone I reflected upon my curious adventure on that night
when I met Olinto, and of my narrow escape from the hands of my unknown
enemies. I wondered if that ingenious and dastardly attempt upon my life
had really any connection with that strange incident at Leghorn. As day
succeeded day, my mind became filled by increasing suspicion. Mystery
surrounded me on every hand.

Indeed, by one curious fact alone it was increased a hundredfold.

Late one afternoon, when I had been out shooting all day with the
Rannoch party, I drove back to the castle in the Perth-cart with three
other men, and found the ladies assembled in the great hall with tea
ready. A welcome log-fire was blazing in the huge old grate, for in
October it is chilly and damp in Scotland and a fire is pleasant at
evening.

Muriel was seated upon the high padded fender--like those one has at
clubs--which always formed a cosy spot for the ladies, especially after
dinner. When I entered, she rose quickly and handed me my cup,
exclaiming as she looked at me--

"Oh, Mr. Gregg! what a state you are in!"

"Yes, I was after snipe, and slipped into a bog," I laughed. "But it
was early this morning, and the mud has dried."

"Come with me, and I'll get you a brush," she urged. And I followed her
through the long corridors and upstairs to a small sitting-room which
was her own little sanctum, where she worked and read--a cosy little
place with two queer old windows in the colossal wall, and a floor of
polished oak, and great black beams above. When the owner had occupied
the house that room had been disused, but it had, I found, been now
completely transformed, and was a most tasteful little nest of luxury
with its bright chintzes, its Turkey rugs and its cheerful fire on the
old stone hearth.

She laughed when I expressed admiration of her little den, and said--

"I believe it was the armory in the old days. But it makes quite a comfy
little boudoir. I can lock myself in and be quite quiet when the party
are too noisy," she added merrily.

But as my eyes wandered around they suddenly fell upon an object which
caused me to start with profound wonder--a cabinet photograph in a frame
of crimson leather.

The picture was that of a young girl--a duplicate of the portrait I had
found torn across and flung aside on board the _Lola_!

The merry eyes laughed out at me as I stood staring at it in sheer
bewilderment.

"What a pretty girl!" I exclaimed quickly, concealing my surprise. "Who
is she?"

My companion was silent a moment, her dark eyes meeting mine with a
strange look of inquiry.

"Yes," she laughed, "everyone admires her. She was a schoolfellow of
mine--Elma Heath."

"Heath!" I echoed. "Where was she at school with you?"

"At Chichester."

"Long ago?"

"A little over two years."

"She's very beautiful!" I declared, taking up the photograph and
discovering that it bore the name of the same well-known photographer in
New Bond Street as that I had found on the carpet of the _Lola_ in the
Mediterranean.

"Yes. She's really prettier than her photograph. It hardly does her
justice."

"And where is she now?"

"Why are you so very inquisitive, Mr. Gregg?" laughed the handsome girl.
"Have you actually fallen in love with her from her picture?"

"I'm hardly given to that kind of thing, Miss Leithcourt," I answered
with mock severity. "I don't think even my worst enemy could call me a
flirt, could she?"

"No. I will give you your due," she declared. "You never do flirt. That
is why I like you."

"Thanks for your candor, Miss Leithcourt," I said.

"Only," she added, "you seem smitten with Elma's charms."

"I think she's extremely pretty," I remarked, with the photograph still
in my hand. "Do you ever see her now?"

"Never," she replied. "Since the day I left school we have never met.
She was several years younger than myself, and I heard that a week after
I left Chichester her people came and took her away. Where she is now I
have no idea. Her people lived somewhere in Durham. Her father was a
doctor."

Her reply disappointed me. Yet I had, at least, retained knowledge of
the name of the original of the picture, and from the photographer I
might perhaps discover her address, for to me it seemed that she was
somehow intimately connected with those mysterious yachtsmen.

What Muriel told me concerning her, I did not doubt for a single
instant. Yet it was certainly more than a coincidence that a copy of the
picture which had created such a deep impression upon me should be
preserved in her own little boudoir as a souvenir of a devoted
school-friend.

"Then you have heard absolutely nothing as to her present position or
whereabouts--whether she is married, for instance?"

"Ah!" she cried mischievously. "You betray yourself by your own words.
You have fallen in love with her, I really believe, Mr. Gregg. If she
knew, she'd be most gratified--or at least, she ought to be."

At which I smiled, preferring that she should adopt that theory in
preference to any other.

She spoke frankly, as a pure honest girl would speak. She was not
jealous, but she nevertheless resented--as women do resent such
things--that I should fall in love with a friend's photograph.

There was a mystery surrounding that torn picture; of that I was
absolutely certain. The remembrance of that memorable evening when I had
dined on board the _Lola_ arose vividly before me. Why had the girl's
portrait been so ruthlessly destroyed and the frame turned with its face
to the wall? There was some reason--some distinct and serious motive in
it. Had Muriel told me the truth, I wondered, or was she merely seeking
to shield the suspected man who was her lover?

Hour by hour the mystery surrounding the Leithcourts became more
inscrutable, more intensely absorbing. I had searched a copy of the
London Directory at the Station Hotel at Carlisle, and found that no
house in Green Street was registered as occupied by the tenant of
Rannoch; and, further, when I came to examine the list of guests at the
castle, I found that they were really persons unknown in society. They
were merely of that class of witty, well-dressed parasites who always
cling on to the wealthy and make believe that they are smart and of the
_grande monde_. Rannoch was an expensive place to keep up, with all that
big retinue of servants and gamekeepers, and with those nightly dinners
cooked by a French _chef_; yet Leithcourt seemed to possess a long
pocket and smiled upon those parasites, officers of doubtful commission
and younger sprigs of the pseudo-aristocracy who surrounded him, while
his wife, keen-eyed and of superb bearing, was punctilious concerning
all points of etiquette, and at the same time indefatigable that her
mixed set of guests should enjoy a really good time.

But I was not the only person who could not make them out. My uncle was
the first to open my eyes regarding the true character of certain of the
men staying at Rannoch.

"I think, Gordon, that one or two of those fellows with Leithcourt are
rank outsiders," he said confidentially to me one night after we had had
a hard day's shooting, and were playing a hundred up at billiards before
retiring. "One man, who arrived yesterday, I know too well. He was
struck off the list at Boodle's three years ago for card-sharping--that
thin-faced, fair-mustached man named Cadby. I suppose Leithcourt doesn't
know it, or he wouldn't have him up here among respectable folk." And my
uncle, chewing the end of his cigar, sniffed angrily, seeming half
inclined to give his friend a gentle hint that the name Cadby was placed
beyond the pale of good society.

"Better not say anything about it," I urged. "It's Leithcourt's own
affair, uncle--not ours."

"Yes, but if a man sets up a position in the country he mustn't be
allowed to ask us to meet such fellows. It's coming it a little too
thick, Gordon. We men can stand the women of the party, but the
men--well, I tell you candidly, I shan't accept his invites to shoot
again."

"No, no, uncle," I protested. "Probably it's owing to ignorance. You'll
be able, a little later on, to give him valuable tips. He's a good
fellow, and only wants experience in Scotland to get along all right."

"Yes. But I don't like it, my boy, I don't like it! It isn't playing a
fair game," declared the rigid old gentleman, coloring resentfully. "I'm
not going to return the invitation and ask that sharper, Cadby, to my
house--and I tell you that plainly."

Next day I shot with the Carmichaels of Crossburn, and about four
o'clock, after a good day, took leave of the party in the Black Glen,
and started off alone to walk home, a distance of about six miles. It
was already growing dusk, and would be quite dark, I knew, before I
reached my uncle's house. My most direct way was to follow the river for
about two miles and then strike straight across the large dense wood,
and afterwards over a wide moor full of treacherous bogs and pitfalls
for the unwary.

My gun over my shoulder, I had walked on for about three-quarters of an
hour, and had nearly traversed the wood, at that hour so dark that I had
considerable difficulty in finding my way, when--of a sudden--I fancied
I distinguished voices.

I halted. Yes. Men were talking in low tones of confidence, and in that
calm stillness of evening they appeared nearer to me than they actually
were.

I listened, trying to distinguish the words uttered, but could make out
nothing. They were moving slowly together, in close vicinity to myself,
for their feet stirred the dry leaves, and I could hear the boughs
cracking as they forced their way through them.

Of a sudden, while standing there not daring to breathe lest I should
betray my presence, a strange sound fell upon my eager ears.

Next moment I realized that I was at that place where Leithcourt so
persistently kept his disappointed tryst, having approached it from
within the wood.

The sound alarmed me, and yet it was neither an explosion of fire-arms
nor a startling cry for help.

One word reached me in the darkness--one single word of bitter and
withering reproach.

Heedless of the risk I ran and the peril to which I exposed myself, I
dashed forward with a resolve to penetrate the mystery, until I came to
the gap in the rough stone wall where Leithcourt's habit was to halt
each day at sundown.

There, in the falling darkness, the sight that met my eyes at the spot
held me rigid, appalled, stupefied.

In that instant I realized the truth--a truth that was surely the
strangest ever revealed to any man.




CHAPTER V

CONTAINS CERTAIN CONFIDENCES


As I dashed forward to the gap in the boundary wall of the wood, I
nearly stumbled over a form lying across the narrow path.

So dark was it beneath the trees that at first I could not plainly make
out what it was until I bent and my hands touched the garments of a
woman. Her hat had fallen off, for I felt it beneath my feet, while the
cloak was a thick woolen one.

Was she dead, I wondered? That cry--that single word of
reproach--sounded in my ears, and it seemed plain that she had been
struck down ruthlessly after an exchange of angry words.

I felt in my pocket for my vestas, but unfortunately my box was empty.
Yet just at that moment my strained ears caught a sound--the sound of
someone moving stealthily among the fallen leaves. Seizing my gun, I
demanded who was there.

There was, however, no response. The instant I spoke the movement
ceased.

As far as I could judge, the person in concealment was within the wood
about ten yards from me, separated by an impenetrable thicket. As,
however, I stood out against the sky, my silhouette was, I knew, a
well-defined mark for anyone with fire-arms.

It seemed evident that a tragedy had occurred, and that the victim at my
feet was a woman. But whom?

Of a sudden, while I stood hesitating, blaming myself for being without
matches, I heard the movement repeated. Someone was quickly
receding--escaping from the spot. I listened again. The sound was not
of the rustling of leaves or the crackling of dried sticks, but the low
thuds of a man's feet racing over softer ground. He had scaled the rough
stone dyke and was out in the turnip-field adjacent.

I sprang through the gap, straining my eyes into the gloom, and as I did
so could just distinguish a dark figure receding quickly beneath the
wall of the wood.

In an instant I dashed after it. But the agility of whoever the fugitive
was, man or woman, was marvelous. I considered myself a fairly good
runner, but racing across those rough turnips and heavy, newly-plowed
land in the darkness and carrying my gun soon caused me to pant and
blow. Yet the figure I was pursuing was so fleet of foot and so nimble
in climbing the high rough walls that from the very first I was outrun.

Down the steep hill to the Scarwater I followed the fugitive, crossing
the old footbridge near Penpont, and then up a wild winding glen towards
the Cairnsmore of Deugh. For a couple of miles or more I was close
behind, until, at a turn in the dark wooded glen where it branched in
two directions, I lost all trace of the person who flew from me. Whoever
it was they had very cleverly gone into hiding in the undergrowth of one
or other of the two glens--which I could not decide.

I stood out of breath, the perspiration pouring from me, undecided how
to act.

Was it Leithcourt himself whom I had surprised?

That idea somehow became impressed upon me and I suddenly resolved to go
boldly across to Rannoch and ascertain for myself. Therefore, with the
excuse that I was belated on my walk home, I turned back down the glen,
and half an hour afterward entered the great well-lighted hall of the
castle where the guests, ready dressed, were assembling prior to
dinner.

I was welcomed warmly, as I was always by the men of the party, who
seeing my muddy plight at once offered me a glass of the sportsman's
drink in Scotland, and while I was adding soda to it Leithcourt himself
joined his guests, ready dressed in his dinner jacket, having just
descended from his room.

"Hulloa, Gregg!" he exclaimed heartily, holding out his hand. "Had a
long day of it, evidently. Good sport with Carmichael--eh?"

"Very fair," I said. "I remained longer with him than I ought to have
done, and have got belated on my way home, so looked in for a
refresher."

"Quite right," he laughed merrily. "You're always welcome, you know. I'd
have been annoyed if I knew you had passed without coming in."

And Muriel, a pretty figure in a low-cut gown of turquoise chiffon,
standing behind her father, smiled secretly at me. I smiled at her in
return, but it was a strange smile, I fear, for with the knowledge of
that additional mystery within me--the mystery of the woman lying
unconscious or perhaps dead, up in the wood--held me stupefied.

I had suspected Leithcourt because of his constant trysts at that spot,
but I had at least proved that my suspicions were entirely without
foundation. He could not have got home and dressed in the time, for I
had taken the nearest route to the castle while the fugitive would be
compelled to make a wide detour.

I only remained a few minutes, then went forth into the darkness again,
utterly undecided how to act. My first impulse was to return to the
woman's aid, for she might not be dead after all.

And yet when I recollected that hoarse cry that rang out in the
darkness, I knew too well that she had been struck fatally. It was this
latter conviction that prevented me from turning back to the wood. You
will perhaps blame me, but the fact is I feared that if I went there
suspicion might fall upon me, now that the real culprit had so
ingeniously escaped.

If the victim were dead, what aid could I render? A knife had, I
believed, been used, for my foot caught against it when I had started
off after the fugitive. The only doubt in my own mind was whether the
unfortunate woman was actually dead, for if she were not then my
disinclination to return to the scene of the tragedy was culpable.

Whether or not I acted rightly in remaining away from the place, I leave
it to you to judge in the light of the amazing truth which afterwards
transpired.

I decided to walk straight back to my uncle's, and dinner was over
before I had had my tub and dressed. I therefore ate my meal alone,
Davis, the grave old butler, serving me with that stateliness which
always amused me. I usually chatted with him when others were not
present, but that night I remained silent, my mind full of that strange
and startling affair of which I alone held secret knowledge.

Next day the body would surely be found; then the whole countryside
would be filled with horror and surprise. Was it possible that
Leithcourt, that calm, well-groomed, distinguished-looking man, held any
knowledge of the ghastly truth? No. His manner as he stood in the hall
chatting gayly with me was surely not that of a man with a guilty
secret. I became firmly convinced that although the tragedy affected him
very closely, and that it had occurred at the spot which he had each day
visited for some mysterious purpose, yet up to the present he was in
ignorance of what had transpired.

But who was the woman? Was she young or old?

A thousand times I regretted bitterly that I had no matches with me so
that I might examine her features.

One sudden thought that struck me as I sat there at table caused me to
lay down my fork and pause in breathless bewilderment. Was the victim
that sweet-faced young girl whose photograph had been so ruthlessly cast
from its frame and destroyed? The theory was a weird one, but was it the
truth?

I longed for the coming of the dawn when the Rannoch keepers would most
certainly discover her. Then at least I should know the truth, for I
might go and see the body out of curiosity without arousing any
suspicion.

I tried to play my usual game of billiards with my uncle, but my hand
was so unsteady that the old gentleman began to chaff me.

"It's the gun, I suppose," I remarked. "I've been carrying it all day,
and am tired out. I walked all the way home from Crossburn."

"The Carmichaels are very thick with the Leithcourts, I hear," my uncle
remarked. "Strange they didn't ask Leithcourt to their shoot."

"They did, but he'd got another engagement--over at Kenmure Castle, I
think."

I retired to my room that night full of fevered apprehension. Had I
acted rightly in not returning to that lonely spot on the brow of the
hill? Had I done as a man should do in keeping the tragic secret to
myself?

I opened my window and gazed away across the dark Nithsdale, where, in
the distant gloom, the black line of wood loomed up against the stormy
sky. The stars were no longer shining and the rain clouds had gathered.
I stood with my face turned to the dark indistinct spot that held the
secret, lost in wonderment.

At last I closed the window and turned in, but no sleep came to my
eyes, so full was my mind of the startling events of those past few
months and of that gruesome discovery I had made.

Had the fugitive actually recognized me? Probably my voice when I had
called out had betrayed me. Hour after hour I lay puzzling, trying to
arrive at some solution of that intricate problem which now presented
itself. Muriel could tell me what I wished to know. Of that I was
certain. Yet she dared not speak. Some inexpressible terror held her
dumb--she was affianced to the man Martin Woodroffe.

Again I rose, lit the gas, and tried to read a novel. But I could not
concentrate my thoughts, which were ever wandering to that strange
mystery of the wood. At six I shaved, descended, and went out with the
dogs for a short walk; but on returning I heard of nothing unusual, and
was compelled to remain inactive until near mid-day.

I was crossing the stable-yard where I had gone to order the carriage
for my aunt, when an English groom, suddenly emerging from the
harness-room, touched his cap, saying--

"Have you 'eard, sir, of the awful affair up yonder?"

"Of what?" I asked quickly.

"Well, sir, there seems to have been a murder last night up in Rannoch
Wood," said the man quickly. "Holden, the gardener, has just come back
from that village and says that Mr. Leithcourt's under-gamekeeper as he
was going home at five this morning came upon a dead body."

"A dead body!" I exclaimed, feigning great surprise.

"Yes, sir--a youngish man. He'd been stabbed to the heart."

"A man!"

"Yes, sir--so Holden says."

"Call Holden. I'd like to know all he's heard," I said. And presently,
when the gardener emerged from the grape-house, I sought of him all the
particulars he had gathered.

"I don't know very much, sir," was the man's reply. "I went into the inn
for a glass of beer at eleven, as I always do, and heard them talking
about it. A young man was murdered last night up in Rannoch Wood. The
gamekeeper thought at first there'd been a fight among poachers, but
from the dead man's clothes they say he isn't a poacher at all, but a
stranger in this district."

"The body was that of a man, then?" I asked, trying to conceal my utter
bewilderment.

"Yes--about thirty, they say. The police have taken him to the mortuary
at Dumfries, and the detectives are up there now looking at the spot,
they say."

A man! And yet the body I found was that of a woman--that I could swear.

After lunch I took the dog-cart and drove alone into Dumfries.

When I inquired of the police-constable on duty at the town mortuary to
be allowed to view the body of the murdered man, he regarded me, I
thought, with considerable suspicion. My request was an unusual one.
Nevertheless, he took me up a narrow alley, unlocked a door, and I found
myself in the cold, gloomy chamber of death. From a small dingy window
above the light fell upon an object lying upon a large slab of gray
stone and covered with a soiled sheet.

The sight was ghastly and gruesome; the body lay there awaiting the
official inquiry into the cause of death. The silence of the tomb was
unbroken, save for the heavy tread of the policeman, who having removed
his helmet in the presence of the dead, lifted the end of the sheet,
revealing to me a white, hard-set face, with closed eyes and dropped
jaw.

I started back as my eyes fell upon the dead countenance. I was entirely
unprepared for such a revelation. The truth staggered me.

The victim was the man who had acted as my friend--the Italian waiter,
Olinto.

I advanced and peered into the thin inanimate features, scarce able to
realize the actual fact. But my eyes had not deceived me. Though death
distorts the facial expression of every man, I had no difficulty in
identifying him.

"You recognize him, sir?" remarked the officer. "Who is he? Our people
are very anxious to know, for up to the present moment they haven't
succeeded in establishing his identity."

I bit my lips. I had been an arrant fool to betray myself before that
man. Yet having done so, I saw that any attempt to conceal my knowledge
must of necessity reflect upon me.

"I will see your inspector," I answered with as much calmness as I could
muster. "Where has the poor fellow been wounded?"

"Through the heart," responded the constable, as turning the sheet
further down he showed me the small knife wound which had penetrated the
victim's jacket and vest full in the chest.

"This is the weapon," he added, taking from a shelf close by a long,
thin poignard with an ivory handle, which he handed to me.

In an instant I recognized what it was, and how deadly. It was an old
Florentine _misericordia_, a long thin, triangular blade, a quarter of
an inch wide at its greatest width, tapering to a needle-point, with a
hilt of yellow ivory, the most deadly and fatal of all the daggers and
poignards of the Middle Ages. The blade being sharp on three angles
produced a wound that caused internal hemorrhage and which never
healed--hence the name given to it by the Florentines.

It was still blood-stained, but as I took the deadly thing in my hand I
saw that its blade was beautifully damascened, a most elegant specimen
of a medieval arm. Yet surely none but an Italian would use such a
weapon, or would aim so truly as to penetrate the heart.

And yet the person struck down was a woman, and not a man!

A wound from a _misericordia_ always proves fatal, because the shape of
the blade cuts the flesh into little flaps which, on withdrawing the
knife, close up and prevent the blood from issuing forth. At the same
time, however, no power can make them heal again. A blow from such a
weapon is as surely fatal as the poisoned poignard of the Borgia or the
Medici.

I handed the stiletto back to the man without comment. My resolve was to
say as little as possible, for I had no desire to figure publicly at the
inquiry, and consequently negative all my own efforts to solve the
mystery of the Leithcourts and of Martin Woodroffe.

I returned to where the figure was lying so ghastly and motionless, and
looked again for the last time upon the dead face of the man who had
served me so well, and yet who had enticed me so nearly to my death. In
the latter incident there was a deep mystery. He had relented at the
last moment, just in time to save me from my secret enemies.

Could it be that my enemies were his? Had he fallen a victim by the same
hand that had attempted so ingeniously to kill me?

Why had Leithcourt gone so regularly up to Rannoch Wood? Was it in
order to meet the man who was to be entrapped and killed? What was
Olinto Santini doing so far from London, if he had not come expressly to
meet someone in secret?

As I glanced down at the cold, inanimate countenance upon which mystery
was written, I became seized by regret. He had been a faithful and
honest servant, and even though he had enticed me to that fatal house in
Lambeth, yet I recollected his words, how he had done so under
compulsion. I remembered, too, how he had implored me not to prejudge
him before I became aware of the full facts.

With my own hand I re-covered the face with the sheet, and inwardly
resolved to avenge the dastardly crime.

I regretted that I was compelled to reveal the dead man's name to the
police, yet I saw that to make some statement was now inevitable, and
therefore I accompanied the constable to the inspector's office some
distance across the town.

Having been introduced to the big, fair-haired man in a rough tweed
suit, who was apparently directing the inquiries into the affair, he
took me eagerly into a small back room and began to question me. I was,
however, wary not to commit myself to anything further than the
identification of the body.

"The fact is," I said confidentially, "you must omit me from the
witnesses at the inquest."

"Why?" asked the detective suspiciously.

"Because if it were known that I have identified him, all chance of
getting at the truth will at once vanish," I answered. "I have come here
to tell you in strictest confidence who the poor fellow really is."

"Then you know something of the affair?" he said, with a strong Highland
accent.

"I know nothing," I declared. "Nothing except his name."

"H'm. And you say he's a foreigner--an Italian--eh?"

"He was in my service in Leghorn for several years, and on leaving me he
came to London and obtained an engagement as waiter in a restaurant. His
father lived in Leghorn; he was doorkeeper at the Prefecture."

"But why was he here, in Scotland?"

"How can I tell?"

"You know something of the affair. I mean that you suspect somebody, or
you would have no objection to giving evidence at the inquiry."

"I have no suspicions. To me the affair is just as much of an enigma as
to you," I hastened at once to explain. "My only fear is that if the
assassin knew that I had identified him he would take care not to betray
himself."

"You therefore think he will betray himself?"

"I hope so."

"By the fact that the man was attacked with an Italian stiletto, it
would seem that his assailant was a fellow-countryman," suggested the
detective.

"The evidence certainly points to that," I replied.

"You don't happen to be aware of anyone--any foreigner, I mean--who was,
or might be his enemy?"

I responded in the negative.

"Ah," he went on, "these foreigners are always fighting among themselves
and using knives. I did ten years' service in Edinburgh and made lots of
arrests for stabbing affrays. Italians, like Greeks, are a dangerous lot
when their blood is up." Then he added: "Personally, it seems to me that
the murdered man was enticed from London to that spot and coolly done
away with--from some motive of revenge, most probably."

"Most probably," I said. "A vendetta, perhaps. I live in Italy, and
therefore know the Italians well," I added.

I had given him my card, and told him with whom I was staying.

"Where were you yesterday, sir?" he inquired presently.

"I was shooting--on the other side of the Nithsdale," I answered, and
then went on to explain my movements, without, however, mentioning my
visit to Rannoch.

"And although you know the murdered man so intimately, you have no
suspicion of anyone in this district who was acquainted with him?"

"I know no one who knew him. When he left my service he had never been
in England."

"You say he was engaged in service in London?"

"Yes, at a restaurant in Oxford Street, I believe. I met him
accidentally in Pall Mall one evening, and he told me so."

"You don't know the name of the restaurant?"

"He did tell me, but unfortunately I have forgotten."

The detective drew a deep breath of regret.

"Someone who waited for him on the edge of that wood stepped out and
killed him--that's evident," he said.

"Without a doubt."

"And my belief is that it was an Italian. There were two foreigners who
slept at a common lodging-house two nights ago and went on tramp towards
Glasgow. We have telegraphed after them, and hope we shall find them.
Scotsmen or Englishmen never use a knife of that pattern."

With his latter remark I entirely coincided. In my own mind that was the
strongest argument in favor of Leithcourt's innocence. That the tenant
of Rannoch had kept that secret tryst in daily patience I knew from my
own observations, yet to me it scarcely seemed feasible that he would
use a weapon so peculiarly Italian and yet so terribly deadly.

And then when I reflected further, recollecting that the body I had
discovered was that of a woman and not a man, I stood staggered and
bewildered by the utterly inexplicable enigma.

I promised the burly detective that in exchange for his secrecy
regarding my statement that I would assist him in every manner possible
in the solution of the problem.

"The real name of the murdered man must be at all costs withheld," I
urged. "It must not appear in the papers, for I feel confident that only
by the pretense that he is unknown can we arrive at the truth. If his
name is given at the inquiry, then the assassin will certainly know that
I have identified him."

"And what then?"

"Well," I said with some hesitation, "while I am believed to be in
ignorance we shall have opportunity for obtaining the truth."

"Then you do really suspect?" he said, again looking at me with those
cold, blue eyes.

"I know not whom to suspect," I declared. "It is a mystery why the man
who was once my faithful servant should be enticed to that wood and
stabbed to the heart."

"There is no one in the vicinity who knew him?"

"Not to my knowledge."

"We might obtain his address in London through his father in Leghorn,"
suggested the officer.

"I will write to-day if you so desire," I said readily. "Indeed, I will
get my friend the British Consul to go round and see the old man and
telegraph the address if he obtains it."

"Capital!" he declared. "If you will do us this favor we shall be
greatly indebted to you. It is fortunate that we have established the
victim's identity--otherwise we might be entirely in the dark. A
murdered foreigner is always more or less of a mystery."

Therefore, then and there, I took a sheet of paper and wrote to my old
friend Hutcheson at Leghorn, asking him to make immediate inquiry of
Olinto's father as to his son's address in London.

I said nothing to the police of that strange adventure of mine over in
Lambeth, or of how the man now dead had saved my life. That his enemies
were my own he had most distinctly told me, therefore I felt some
apprehension that I myself was not safe. Yet in my hip pocket I always
carried my revolver--just as I did in Italy--and I rather prided myself
on my ability to shoot straight.

We sat for a long time discussing the strange affair. In order to betray
no eagerness to get away, I offered the big Highlander a cigar from my
case, and we smoked together. The inquiry would be held on the morrow,
he told me, but as far as the public was concerned the body would remain
as that of some person "unknown."

"And you had better not come to my uncle's house, or send anyone," I
said. "If you desire to see me, send me a line and I will meet you here
in Dumfries. It will be safer."

The officer looked at me with those keen eyes of his, and said:

"Really, Mr. Gregg, I can't quite make you out, I confess. You seem to
be apprehensive of your own safety. Why?"

"Italians are a very curious people," I responded quickly. "Their
vendetta extends widely sometimes."

"Then you have reason to believe that the enemy of this poor fellow
Santini may be your enemy also?"

"One never knows whom one offends when living in Italy," I laughed, as
lightly as I could, endeavoring to allay his suspicion. "He may have
fallen beneath the assassin's knife by giving quite a small and possibly
innocent offense to somebody. Italian methods are not English, you
know."

"By Jove, sir, and I'm jolly glad they're not!" he said. "I shouldn't
think a police officer's life is a very safe one among all those secret
murder societies I've read about."

"Ah! what you read about them is often very much exaggerated," I assured
him. "It is the vendetta which is such a stain upon the character of the
modern Italian; and depend upon it this affair in Rannoch Wood is the
outcome of some revenge or other--probably over a love affair."

"But you will assist us, sir?" he urged. "You know the Italian language,
which will be of great advantage; besides, the victim was your servant."

"Be discreet," I said. "And in return I will do my very utmost to assist
you in hunting down the assassin."

And thus we made our compact. Half-an-hour after I was driving in the
dog-cart through the pouring rain up the hill out of gray old Dumfries
to my uncle's house.

As I descended from the cart and gave it over to a groom, old Davis, the
butler, came forward, saying in a low voice:

"There's Miss Leithcourt waiting to see you, Mr. Gordon. She's in the
morning-room, and been there an hour. She asked me not to tell anyone
else she's here, sir."

"Then my aunt has not seen her?" I exclaimed, scenting mystery in this
unexpected visit.

"No, sir. She wishes to see you alone, sir."

I walked across the big hall and along the corridor to the room the old
man had indicated.

And as I opened the door and Muriel Leithcourt in plain black rose to
meet me, I plainly saw from her white, haggard countenance that
something had happened--that she had been forced by circumstances to
come to me in strictest confidence.

Was she, I wondered, about to reveal to me the truth?




CHAPTER VI

THE GATHERING OF THE CLOUDS


"Mr. Gregg," exclaimed the girl with agitation, as she put forth her
black-gloved hand, "I--I suppose you know--you've heard all about the
discovery to-day up at the wood? I need not tell you anything about it"

"Yes, Miss Leithcourt, I only wish you would tell me about it," I said
gravely, inviting her to a chair and seating myself. "I've heard some
extraordinary story about a man being found dead, but I've been in
Dumfries nearly all day. Who is the man?"

"Ah! that we don't know," she replied, pale-faced and anxious. Her
attitude was as though she wished to confide in me and yet still
hesitated to do so.

"You've been waiting for me quite a long time, Davis tells me. I regret
that you should have done this. If you had left word that you wished to
see me, I would have come over to you at once."

"No. I wanted to see you alone--that's the reason I am here. They must
not know at home that I've been over here, so I purposely asked the man
not to announce me to your aunt."

"You want to see me privately," I said in a low, earnest voice. "Why? Is
there any service I can render you?"

"Yes. A very great one," she responded with quick eagerness,
"I--well--the fact is, I have summoned courage to come to you and beg
of you to help me. I am in great distress--and I have not a single
friend whom I can trust--in whom I can confide."

"I shall esteem it the highest honor if you will trust me," I said in
deep earnestness. "I can only assure you that I will remain loyal to
your interests and to yourself."

"Ah! I believe you will, Mr. Gregg!" she declared with enthusiasm, her
large, dark eyes turned upon me--the eyes of a woman in sheer and bitter
despair. Her face was perfect, one of the most handsome I had ever gazed
upon. The more I saw of her the greater was the fascination she held
over me.

A silence fell between us as she sat with her gloved hands lying idly in
her lap. Her lips moved nervously, but no sound came from them, so
agitated was she, so eager to tell me something; and yet at the same
time reluctant to take me into her confidence.

"Well?" I asked at last in a low voice. "I am quite ready to render you
any service, if you will only command me."

"Ah! But I fear what I require will strike you as so unusual--you will
hesitate to act when I explain what service I require of you," she said
doubtfully.

"I cannot tell you until I hear your wishes," I said, smiling, and yet
puzzled at her attitude.

"It concerns the terrible discovery made up in Rannoch Wood," she said
in a hoarse, nervous voice at last. "That unknown man was
murdered--stabbed to the heart."

"Well?"

"Well," she said, scarcely above a whisper, "I have suspicions."

"Of the murdered man's identity?"

"No. Of the assassin."

I glanced at her sharply and saw the intense look in her dark, wide-open
eyes.

"You believe you know who dealt the blow?"

"I have a suspicion--that is all. Only I want you to help me, if you
will."

"Most certainly," I responded. "But if you believe you know the assassin
you probably know something of the victim?"

"Only that he looked like a foreigner."

"Then you have seen him?" I exclaimed, much surprised.

My remark caused her to hold her breath for an instant. Then she
answered, rather lamely, it seemed to me:

"I saw him when the keepers brought the body to the castle."

Now, according to the account I had heard, the police had conveyed the
dead man direct from the wood into Dumfries. Was it possible, therefore,
that she had seen Olinto before he met with his sudden end?

I feared to press her for an explanation at that moment, but,
nevertheless, the admission that she had seen him struck me as a very
peculiar fact.

"You judge him to be a foreigner?" I remarked as casually as I could.

"From his features and complexion I guessed him to be Italian," she
responded quickly, at which I pretended to express surprise. "I saw him
after the keepers had found him."

"Besides," she went on, "the stiletto was evidently an Italian one,
which would almost make it appear that a foreigner was the assassin."

"Is that your own suspicion?"

"No."

"Why?"

She hesitated a moment, then in a low, eager voice she said:

"Because I have already seen that three-edged knife in another person's
possession."

"That's pretty strong evidence," I declared. "The person in question
will have to prove that he was not in Rannoch Wood last evening at
nightfall."

"How do you know it was done at nightfall?" she asked quickly with some
surprise, half-rising from her chair.

"I merely surmised that it was," I responded, inwardly blaming myself
for my ill-timed admission.

"Ah!" she said with a slight sigh, "there is more mystery in this affair
than we have yet discovered, Mr. Gregg. What, I wonder, brought the
unfortunate young man up into our wood?"

"An appointment, without a doubt. But with whom?"

She shook her head, saying:

"My father often goes to that spot to shoot pigeon in the evening. He
told us so at luncheon to-day. How fortunate he was not there last
night, or he might be suspected."

"Yes," I said. "It is a very fortunate circumstance, for it cannot be a
pleasant experience to be under suspicion of being an assassin. He was
at home last night, was he?" I added casually.

"Of course. Don't you recollect that when you called he chatted with
you? I did some typewriting for him in the study, and we were together
all the afternoon--or at least till nearly five o'clock, when we went
out into the hall to tea."

"Then what is your theory regarding the affair?" I inquired, rather
puzzled why she should so decisively prove an alibi for her father.

"It seems certain that the poor fellow went to the wood by appointment,
and was killed. But have you been up to the spot since the finding of
the body?"

"No. Have you?"

"Yes. The affair interested me, and as soon as I recognized the old
Italian knife in the hand of the keeper, I went up there and looked
about. I am glad I did so, for I found something which seems to have
escaped the notice of the detectives."

"And what's that?" I asked eagerly.

"Why, about three yards from the pool of blood where the unfortunate
foreigner was found is another small pool of blood where the grass and
ferns around are all crushed down as though there had been a struggle
there."

"There may have been a struggle at that spot, and the man may have
staggered some distance before he fell dead."

"Not if he had been struck in the heart, as they say. He would fall,
would he not?" she suggested. "No. The police seem very dense, and this
plain fact has not yet occurred to them. Their theory is the same as
what you suggest, but my own is something quite different, Mr. Gregg. I
believe that a second person also fell a victim," she added in a low,
distinct tone.

I gazed at her open-mouthed. Did she, I wondered, know the actual truth?
Was she aware that the woman who had fallen there had disappeared?

"A second person!" I echoed, as though in surprise. "Then do you believe
that a double murder was committed?"

"I draw my conclusion from the fact that the young man, on being struck
in the heart, could not have gone such a distance as that which
separates the one mark from the other."

"But he might have been slightly wounded--on the hand, or in the
face--at first, and then at the spot where he was found struck
fatally," I suggested.

She shook her head dubiously, but made no reply to my argument. Her
confidence in her own surmises made it quite apparent that by some
unknown means she was aware of the second victim. Indeed, a few moments
later she said to me:

"It is for this reason, Mr. Gregg, that I have sought you in confidence.
Nobody must know that I have come here to you, or they would suspect;
and if suspicion fell upon me it would bring upon me a fate worse than
death. Remember, therefore, that my future is entirely in your hands."

"I don't quite understand," I said, rising and standing before her in
the fading twilight, while the rain drove upon the old diamond window
panes. "But I can only assure you that whatever confidence you repose in
me, I shall never abuse, Miss Leithcourt."

"I know, I know!" she said quickly. "I trust you in this matter
implicitly. I have come to you for many reasons, chief of them being
that if a second victim has fallen beneath the hand of the assassin, it
is, I know, a woman."

"A woman! Whom?"

"At present I cannot tell you. I must first establish the true facts. If
this woman were really stricken down, then her body lies concealed
somewhere in the vicinity. We must find it and bring home the crime to
the guilty one."

"But if we succeed in finding it, could we place our hand upon the
assassin?" I asked, looking straight at her.

"If we find it, the crime would then tell its own tale--it would convict
the person in whose hand I have seen that fatal weapon," was her clear,
bold answer.

"Then you wish me to assist you in this search, Miss Leithcourt?" I
said, wondering if her suspicions rested upon that mysterious yachtsman,
Philip Hornby, the man to whom she was engaged.

"Yes, I would beg of you to do your utmost in secret to endeavor to
discover the body of the second victim. It is a woman--of that I am
certain. Find her, and we shall then be able to bring the crime home to
the assassin."

"But my search may bring suspicion upon me," I remarked. "It will be
difficult to examine the whole wood without arousing the curiosity of
somebody--the keeper or the police."

"I have already thought of that," she said. "I will pretend to-morrow to
lose this watch-bracelet in the wood," and she held up her slim wrist to
show me the little enameled watch set in her bracelet. "Then you and I
will search for it diligently, and the police will never suspect the
real reason of our investigation. To-morrow I shall write to you telling
you about my loss, and you will come over to Rannoch and offer to help
me."

I was silent for a moment.

"Is Mr. Woodroffe back at the castle? I heard he was to return to-day."

"No. I had a letter from him from Bordeaux a week ago. He is still on
the Continent. I believe, indeed, he has gone to Russia, where he
sometimes has business."

"I asked you the question, Miss Muriel, because I thought if Mr.
Woodroffe were here, he might object to our searching in company," I
explained, smiling.

Her cheeks flushed slightly, as though confused at my reference to her
engagement, and she said mischievously:

"I don't see why he should object in the least. If you are good enough
to assist me to search for my bracelet, he surely ought to be much
obliged to you."

It was on the tip of my tongue to explain to that dark-eyed, handsome
girl the circumstances in which I had met her lover on the sunny
Mediterranean shore, yet prudence forbade me to refer to the matter, and
I at once gladly accepted her invitation to investigate the curious
disappearance of the body of poor Olinto's fellow-victim.

What secret knowledge could be possessed by that smart, handsome girl
before me? That her suspicions were in the right direction I felt
confident, yet if the dead woman had been removed and hidden by the
assassin it must have been after the discovery made by me. The fellow
must have actually dared to return to the spot and carry off the victim.
Yet if he had actually done that, why did he allow the corpse of the
Italian to remain and await discovery? He might perhaps have been
disturbed and compelled to make good his escape.

"If the woman was really removed the assassin must surely have had some
assistance," I pointed out. "He could not have carried the body very far
unaided."

She agreed with me, but expressed a belief that the double crime had
been committed alone and unaided.

"Have you any idea as to the motive?" I asked her, eager to hear her
reply.

"Well," she answered hesitatingly, "if the woman has fallen a victim,
the motive will become plain; but if not, then the matter must remain a
complete mystery."

"You tell me, Miss Muriel, that you suspect the truth, and yet you deny
all knowledge of the murdered man!" I exclaimed in a tone of slight
reproach.

"Until we have cleared up the mystery of the woman I can say nothing,"
was her answer. "I can only tell you, Mr. Gregg, that if what I suspect
is true, then the affair will be found to be one of the strangest, most
startling and most ingenious plots ever devised by one man against the
life of another."

"Then a man is the assassin, you think?" I exclaimed quickly.

"I believe so. But even of that I am not at all sure. We must first find
the woman."

She seemed so positive that a woman had also fallen beneath that deadly
_misericordia_ that I fell to wondering whether she, like myself, had
discovered the body, and was therefore certain that a second crime had
been committed. But I did not seek to question her further, lest her own
suspicions might become aroused. My own policy was to remain silent and
to wait. The woman sitting before me was herself a mystery.

Then, when the rain had abated, I told Davis to send her trap a little
way up the high-road, so that my aunt and uncle should not see her
departing; and after helping her on with her loose driving-coat, we left
by one of the servants' entrances, and I saw her into her high dog-cart
and stood bareheaded in the muddy high-road as she drove away into the
gloom.

       *       *       *       *       *

Rannoch Wood was already in its gold-brown glory of autumn, and as I
stood with Muriel Leithcourt on the edge of it, near the spot where
Olinto Santini had fallen, the morning sun was shining in a cloudless
sky.

True to her promise, she had sent me a note by one of the grooms asking
me to help search for her bracelet, and I had driven over at once to
Rannoch and found her alone awaiting me. The shooting party had gone
over to a distant part of the estate, therefore we were able to stroll
together up the hill and commence our investigations without let or
hindrance. She was sensibly dressed in a short tweed skirt, high
shooting-boots and a tam-o'-shanter hat, while I also had on an old
shooting-suit and carried a thick serviceable stick with which I could
prod likely spots.

On arrival at the wood I asked her opinion which was the most likely
corner, but she replied:

"I know so little of this place, Mr. Gregg. You have known it for years,
while this is only my first season here."

"Very well," I answered. "Let us place ourselves in the position of the
murderer, who probably knew the wood and wished to conceal a body in the
vicinity without risk of conveying it far. On this, the left side, the
wood has been thinned out for nearly half a mile, and therefore affords
but little cover, while here, to the right, it slopes down gently to the
valley and is very thick and partly impenetrable. There can therefore
have been no two courses open to him. He would look for a likely place
to the right. Let us start here, and first take a small circle,
examining every bush carefully. The body may have easily been pushed in
beneath a thicket and well escape observation."

And so together, after taking our bearings, we started off, working our
way into the thick undergrowth, beating with our sticks, and making
minute examination of every bush or heap of dead leaves. In parts, the
great spreading trees shut out the light, rendering our investigations
very difficult; but we kept on, my companion advancing with an eagerness
which showed that the fact of the woman's body being there was no mere
surmise.

All through the morning we walked on, our hands badly torn by brambles.
Even Muriel's thick gloves did not wholly protect her, and once when she
received a nasty scratch across the cheek, she stopped and laughingly
exclaimed:

"Now what untruth must I invent to account for that?"

My own coat was badly torn, and more than once I was compelled to
scramble through almost impassable thickets; yet we found no trace of
any previous intruder, and having completed our circle were compelled to
admit that the gruesome evidence of the second crime did not exist at
that spot.

More than once I felt half inclined to tell her how I had actually
discovered the body of the woman, yet on reflection I foresaw that in
such circumstances silence was best. If I desired to solve the strange
complicated enigma which had thus culminated in a double crime, it would
be necessary for me to keep my own counsel and remain patient and
watchful.

When Hutcheson replied from Leghorn, and when I discovered where Olinto
was employed, I might perhaps follow up the clues from that end. I might
find his wife Armida and learn something of importance from her. So I
was hopeful, and by reason of that hope remained silent.

Muriel was untiring in her activity. Hither and thither she went,
beating down the high bracken and tangles of weeds, poking with her
stick into every hole and corner, and going further and further into the
wood in the certainty that the body was therein concealed.

For my own part, however, I was not too sanguine of success. The portion
of the wood which we had already exhausted seemed to be the most likely
point. To carry the body far would require assistance, and in my own
mind I believed the crime to have been the work of one person. There was
no path in the wood in that direction, but soon we came to a deep
wooded ravine of the existence of which I was in ignorance. It was a
kind of small glen through which a rivulet flowed, but the banks were
covered with a thick impenetrable undergrowth out of which sprang many
fine old trees, a place that had apparently existed for centuries
undisturbed, for here and there a giant trunk that had decayed and
fallen lay across the bank, or had rolled into the rocky bed far below.

"This is a most likely place," declared my dainty little companion as we
approached it. "Anything could easily be concealed in that high bracken
down there. Let us search the whole glen from end to end," she cried
with enthusiasm.

Acting upon her suggestion and without thought of luncheon, we made a
descent of the steep bank until we reached the rocky bed of the stream,
and then by springing from stone to stone--sometimes slipping into the
water, be it said--we commenced to beat the bracken and carefully
examine every bush. Progress was not swift. Once the girl, lithe and
athletic as she was, slipped off a mossy stone into a hole where the
water was up to her knees. But she only laughed gayly at the accident,
and wringing out her wet skirt, said:

"It doesn't matter in the least, if we only find what we're in search
of."

And then, undaunted, she went on, springing from stone to stone and
steadying herself with her stick. If we could only discover the body of
the dead woman, then the rest would be clear, she declared. She would
openly denounce the assassin.

As we went on I revolved within my mind all the curious circumstances in
connection with the amazing affair, and recollected my old friend Jack
Durnford's words when we stood upon the quarter-deck of the _Bulwark_
and I had related to him the visit of the mysterious yacht. I too had
left one effort untried, and I blamed myself for overlooking it. I had
not sought of that Bond Street photographer the name and address of the
original of the photograph that had been mutilated and destroyed--that
girl with the magnificent eyes that had so attracted me.

The afternoon passed, and yet we were not successful. I was faint with
hunger and thirst, yet my companion did not once complain. Her energy
was marvelous--and yet was she not hunting down a criminal? was she not
determined to obtain such evidence as would enable her to speak the
truth fearlessly, and with confidence that it would have the effect of
convicting the guilty one?

Slowly we toiled on up the picturesque little glen for nearly a mile and
a half. Its beauties were extraordinary, and the silence was unbroken
save for the musical ripple of the water over the stones. Hidden there
in the center of that great wood, no one had visited it perhaps for
years, not even the keepers, for no path led there, and by reason of the
tangle of briars and bush it was utterly ungetatable. Indeed, it had
ruined our clothes to search there, and as we went on with so many
windings and turns we became utterly out of our bearings. We knew
ourselves to be in the center of the wood, but that was all.

The sun had set, and the sky above showed the crimson of the distant
afterglow, warning us that it was time we began to think of how to make
our exit. We were passing around a sharp bend in the glen where the
boulders were so thickly moss-grown that our feet fell noiselessly, when
I thought I heard a voice, and raising my hand we both halted suddenly.

"Someone is there," I whispered quickly. "Behind that rock." She nodded
in the affirmative, for she, too, had heard the voice.

We listened, but the sound was not repeated. That someone was on the
other side of the rock I knew, for in a tree in the vicinity a thrush
was hopping from twig to twig, sounding its alarm-cry and objecting to
being disturbed.

Therefore we crept silently forward together to ascertain who were the
intruders. The only manner, however, in which to get a view beyond the
huge rock that, having fallen across the stream centuries ago, had
diverted its channel, was to clamber up its mossy sides to the summit.
This we did eagerly and breathlessly, without betraying our presence by
the utterance of a single word.

To reach the side of the boulder we were compelled to walk through the
shallow water, but Muriel, quite undaunted, sprang lithely along at my
side, and with one accord we swarmed up the steep rock, gripping its
slippery face with our hands and laying ourselves flat as we came to its
summit.

Then together we peered over, just, however, in time to see two dark
figures of men disappearing into the thicket on the opposite side of the
glen.

"Who are they, I wonder?" I asked. "Do you recognize them?"

"No. They are entire strangers to me," was her answer. "But they seem
fairly well dressed. Perhaps two sportsmen from some shooting-party in
the neighborhood. They've lost their way most probably."

"But I don't think they carried guns," I said. "One of them had
something over his shoulder?"

"Wasn't it a gun? I thought it was."

"No, he wasn't carrying it like he'd carry a gun. It was short--and
seemed more like a spade."

"A spade!" she gasped quickly in a low voice. "A spade! Are you certain
of that?"

"No, not at all certain. We only had an instantaneous glance of them.
We were unfortunately too late to see them face to face."

"The back of one of the men, the tall fellow in the brown suit, was
broad and square--the back of someone who is familiar to me, only for
the moment I can't recollect whose it resembles." She only spoke in a
whisper, fearing lest we should be discovered.

I longed to scramble down and rush after the intruders, only the belief
that one of them carried a spade and the other an iron bar struck me as
curious, while at the same moment my eye caught sight of a portion of
the ground below us at the base of the rock which had evidently been
recently disturbed.

"It is a spade the man is carrying!" I cried excitedly. "Look down
there! They've just been burying something!"

Her quick eyes followed the direction I indicated, and she answered:

"I really believe they have concealed something!"

Then when we had allowed the men to get beyond hearing, we both slipped
down to the other side of the boulder and there discovered many signs
that the earth had been hurriedly excavated and only just replaced.

Quicker than it takes to describe the exciting incident which followed,
we broke down the branch of a tree and with it commenced moving the
freshly disturbed earth, which was still soft and easily removed.

Muriel found a dead branch in the vicinity, and both of us set to work
with a will, eager to ascertain what was hidden there. That something
had certainly been concealed was, to us, quite evident, but what it
really was we could not surmise. The hole they had dug did not seem
large enough to admit a human body, yet leaves had been carefully strewn
over the place which, if approached from any other point than the
high-up one whence we had seen it, would arouse no suspicion that the
ground had ever been interfered with.

Digging with a piece of wood was hard and laborious work and it was a
long time before we removed sufficient earth to make a hole of any size.
But Muriel exerted all her energy, and both of us worked on in dogged
silence full of wonder and anticipation. With a spade we should have
soon been able to investigate, but the earth having apparently been
stamped down hard prior to the last covering being put upon it, our
progress was very slow and difficult.

At last, a quarter of an hour or so after we had commenced, Muriel,
standing in the hole and having dug her stake deeply into the ground,
suddenly cried:

"Look! Look, Mr. Gregg! Why--whatever is that?"

I bent forward as she indicated, and my eyes met an object so unexpected
that I was held dumb and motionless.

By what we had succeeded in discovering, the mystery was increased
rather than diminished.

I gave vent to an ejaculation of complete bewilderment, and looked
blankly into my companion's face.

The amazing enigma was surely complete!




CHAPTER VII

CONTAINS A SURPRISE


The first object brought to light, about two feet beneath the surface,
was a piece of dark gray woolen stuff which, when the mold was removed,
proved to be part of a woman's skirt.

With frantic eagerness I got into the hole we had made and removed the
soil with my hands, until I suddenly touched something hard.

A body lay there, doubled up and crushed into the well-like hole the men
had dug.

Together we pulled it out, when, to my surprise, on wiping away the dirt
from the hard waxen features, I recognized it as the body of Armida, the
woman who had been my servant in Leghorn and who had afterwards married
Olinto. Both had been assassinated!

When Muriel gazed upon the dead woman's face she gave vent to an
expression of surprise. The body was evidently not that of the person
she had expected to find.

"Who is she, I wonder?" my companion ejaculated. "Not a lady, evidently,
by her dress and hands."

"Evidently not," was my response, for I still deemed it best to keep my
own counsel. I recollected the story Olinto had told me about his wife;
of her illness and her longing to return to Italy. Yet the dead woman's
countenance must have been healthy enough in life, although her hands
were rough and hard, showing that she had been doing manual labor.

Armida had been a particularly good housemaid, a black-haired,
black-eyed Tuscan, quick, cleanly, and full of a keen sense of humor. It
was a great shock to me to find her lying there dead. The breast of her
dress was stained with dried blood, which, on examination, I found had
issued from a deep and fatal wound beneath the ear where she had been
struck an unerring blow that had severed the artery.

"Those men--those men who buried her! I wonder who they were?" my
companion exclaimed in a hushed voice. "We must follow them and
ascertain. They are certainly the murderers who have returned in secret
and concealed the evidence of this second crime."

"Yes," I said. "Let us go after them. They must not escape us."

Then, leaving the exhumed body beneath a tree, I caught Muriel by the
waist and waded across the deep channel worn by the stream at that
point, after which we both ascended the steep bank where the pair had
disappeared in the darkness of the wood.

I blamed myself a thousand times for not following them, yet my
suspicions had not been aroused until after they had disappeared. The
back of the man in a snuff-colored suit was, she felt confident,
familiar to her. She repeated what she had already told me, yet she
could not remember where she had seen a similar figure before.

We went on through the gloomy forest, for the light had faded and
evening was now creeping on. From time to time we halted and listened.
But there was a dead silence, broken only by the shrill cry of a night
bird and the low rustling of the leaves in the autumn wind. The men knew
their way, it seemed, even though the wood was trackless. Yet they had
nearly twenty minutes start of us, and in that time they might be
already out in the open country. Would they succeed in evading us? Yet
even if they did, I could describe the dress of one of them, while that
of his companion was, as far as I made out, dark blue, of a somewhat
nautical cut. He wore also a flat cap, with a peak.

We went on, striking straight for the open moorland which we knew
bounded the woods in that direction, and before the light had entirely
faded we found ourselves out amongst the heather with the distant hills
looming dark against the horizon. But we saw no sign of the men who had
so secretly concealed the body of their victim.

"I will take you back to the castle, Miss Leithcourt," I said. "And then
I'll drive on into Dumfries and see the police. These men must be
arrested."

"Yes, do," she urged. "I will get into the house by the stable-yard, for
they must not see me in this terrible plight."

It was rough walking, therefore at my invitation she took my arm, and as
she did so I felt that she was shivering.

"You are very wet," I remarked. "I hope you won't take cold."

"Oh! I'm used to getting wet. I drive and cycle a lot, you know, and
very often get drenched," was her reply. Then after a pause she said:
"We must discover who that woman was. She seems, from her complexion and
her hair, to be a foreigner, like the man."

"Yes, I think so," was my reply. "I will tell the police all that we
have found out, and they will go there presently and recover the body."

"If they can only find those two men, then we should know the truth,"
she declared. "One of them--the one in brown--was unusually
broad-shouldered, and seemed to walk with a slight stoop."

"You expected to discover another woman, did you not, Miss Leithcourt?"
I asked presently, as we walked across the moor.

"Yes," she answered. "I expected to find an entirely different person."

"And if you had found her it would have proved the guilt of someone with
whom you are acquainted?"

She nodded in the affirmative.

"Then what we have found this evening does not convey to you the
identity of the assassins?"

"No, unfortunately it does not. We must for the present leave the matter
in the hands of the police."

"But if the identity of the dead woman is established?" I asked.

"It might furnish me with a clue," she exclaimed quickly. "Yes, try and
discover who she is."

"Who was the woman you expected to find?"

"A friend--a very dear friend."

"Will you not tell me her name?" I inquired.

"No, it would be unfair to her," she responded decisively, an answer
which to me was particularly tantalizing.

On we plodded in silence, our thoughts too full for words. Was it not
strange that the mysterious yachtsman should be her lover, and stranger
still that on recognizing me he should have escaped, not only from
Scotland, but away to the Continent?

Was not that, in itself, evidence of guilt and fear?

It was quite dark when I took leave of my bright little companion, who,
tired out and yet uncomplaining, pressed my hand and wished me good
fortune in my investigations.

"I shall await you to-morrow afternoon. Call and tell me everything,
won't you?"

I promised, and then she disappeared into the great stable-yard behind
the castle, while I went on down the dark road and then struck across
the open fields to my uncle's house.

At half-past nine that night I pulled up the dog-cart before the chief
police-station in Dumfries, and alighting at once sought the big fair
Highlander, Mackenzie, with whom I had had the consultation on the
previous day.

When we were seated in his room beneath the hissing gas-jet, I related
my adventure and the result of my investigation.

"What?" he cried, jumping up. "You've unearthed another body--a
woman's?"

"I have. And what is more, I can identify her," I replied. "Her name is
Armida, and she was wife of the murdered man Olinto Santini."

"Then both husband and wife were killed?"

"Without a doubt--a double tragedy."

"But the two men who concealed the body! Will you describe them?"

I did so, and he wrote at my dictation, afterwards remarking--

"We must find them." And calling in one of his sub-inspectors, he gave
him instructions for the immediate circulation of the description to all
the police-stations in the county, saying the two men were wanted on a
charge of willful murder.

When the official had gone out again and we were alone, Mackenzie turned
to me and asked--

"What induced you to search the wood? Why did you suspect a second
crime?"

His question nonplused me for the moment.

"Well, you see, I had identified the young man Olinto, and knowing him
to be married and devoted to his wife, I suspected that she had
accompanied him here. It was entirely a vague surmise. I wondered
whether, if the poor fellow had fallen a victim to his enemies, she had
not also been struck down."

His lips were pressed together in distinct dissatisfaction. I knew my
explanation to be a very lame one, but at all hazards I could not import
Muriel's name into the affair. I had given her my promise, and I
intended to keep it.

"Then the body is still in the glen, where you left it?"

"Yes. If you wish, I will take you to the spot. I can drive you and your
assistant up there."

"Certainly. Let us go," he exclaimed, rising at once and ringing his
bell.

"Get three good lanterns and some matches, and put them in this
gentleman's trap outside," he said to the constable who answered his
summons. "And tell Gilbert Campbell that I want him to go with me up to
Rannoch Wood."

"Yes, sir," answered the man; and the door again closed.

"It's a pity--a thousand pities, Mr. Gregg, that you didn't stop those
two men who buried the body."

"They were already across the stream, and disappearing into the thicket
before I mounted the rock," I explained. "Besides, at the moment I had
no suspicion of what they'd been doing. I believed them to be stragglers
from a neighboring shooting-party who had lost their way."

"Ah, most unfortunate!" he said. "I hope they don't escape us. If
they're foreigners, they are not likely to get away. But if they're
English or Scots, then I fear there's but little chance of us coming up
with them. Yesterday at the inquest the identity of the murdered man was
strictly preserved, and the inquiry was adjourned for a fortnight."

"Of course my name was not mentioned?" I said.

"Of course not," was the detective's reply. Then he asked: "When do you
expect to get a telegram from your friend, the Consul at Leghorn? I am
anxious for that, in order that we may commence inquiries in London."

"The day after to-morrow, I hope. He will certainly reply at once,
providing the dead man's father can still be found."

And at that moment a tall, thin man, who proved to be Detective
Campbell, entered, and five minutes later we were all three driving over
the uneven cobbles of Dumfries and out in the darkness towards Rannoch.

It was cloudy and starless, with a chill mist hanging over the valley;
but my uncle's cob was a swift one, and we soon began to ascend the hill
up past the castle, and then, turning to the left, drove along a steep,
rough by-road which led to the south of the wood and out across the
moor. When we reached the latter we all descended, and I led the horse,
for owing to the many treacherous bogs it was unsafe to drive further.
So, with Mackenzie and Campbell carrying lanterns, we walked on
carefully, skirting the wood for nearly a mile until we came to the
rough wall over which I had clambered with Muriel.

I recognized the spot, and having tied up the cob we all three plunged
into the pitch-darkness of the wood, keeping straight on in the
direction of the glen, and halting every now and then to listen for the
rippling of the stream.

At last, after some difficulty, we discovered it, and searching along
the bank with our three powerful lights, I presently detected the huge
moss-grown boulder whereon I had stood when the pair of fugitives had
disappeared.

"Look!" I cried. "There's the spot!" And quickly we clambered down the
steep bank, lowering ourselves by the branches of the trees until we
came to the water into which I waded, being followed closely by my two
companions.

On gaining the opposite side I clambered up to the base of the boulder
and lowered my lantern to reveal to them the gruesome evidence of the
second crime, but the next instant I cried--

"Why! It's gone!"

"Gone!" gasped the two men.

"Yes. It was here. Look! this is the hole where they buried it! But they
evidently returned, and finding it exhumed, they've retaken possession
of it and carried it away!"

The two detectives gazed down to where I indicated, and then looked at
each other without exchanging a word.

As we stood there dumbfounded at the disappearance of the body, the
Highlander's quick glance caught something, and stooping he picked it up
and examined the little object by the aid of his lantern.

Within his palm I saw lying a tiny little gold cross, about an inch
long, enameled in red, while in the center was a circular miniature of a
kneeling saint, an elegant and beautifully executed little trinket which
might have adorned a lady's bracelet.

"This is a pretty little thing!" remarked the detective. "It may
possibly lead us to something. But, Mr. Gregg," he added, turning to me,
"are you quite certain you left the body here?"

"Certain?" I echoed. "Why, look at the hole I made. You don't think I
have any interest in leading you here on a fool's errand, do you?"

"Not at all," he said apologetically. "Only the whole affair seems so
very inconceivable--I mean that the men, having once got rid of the
evidence of their crime, would hardly return to the spot and re-obtain
possession of it."

"Unless they watched me exhume it, and feared the consequences if it
fell into your hands," I suggested.

"Of course they might have watched you from behind the trees, and when
you had gone they came and carried it away somewhere else," he remarked
dubiously; "but even if they did, it must be in this wood. They would
never risk carrying a body very far, and here is surely the best place
of concealment in the whole country."

"The only thing remaining is to search the wood at daylight," I
suggested. "If the two men came back here during my absence they may
still be on the watch in the vicinity."

"Most probably they are. We must take every precaution," he said
decisively. And then, with our lanterns lowered, we made an examination
of the vicinity, without, however, discovering anything else to furnish
us with a clew. While I had been absent the body of the unfortunate
Armida had disappeared--a fact which, knowing all that I did, was doubly
mysterious.

The pair had, without doubt, watched Muriel and myself, and as soon as
we had gone they had returned and carried off the ghastly remains of the
poor woman who had been so foully done to death.

But who were the men--the fellow with the broad shoulders whom Muriel
recognized, and the slim seafarer in his pilot-coat and peaked cap? The
enigma each hour became more and more inscrutable.

At dawn Mackenzie, with four of his men, made a thorough examination of
the wood, but although they continued until dusk they discovered
nothing, neither was anything heard of the mysterious seafarer and his
companion in brown tweeds.

I called on Muriel as arranged, and explained how the body had so
suddenly disappeared, whereupon she stared at me pale-faced, saying--

"The assassins must have watched us! They are aware, then, that we have
knowledge of their crime?"

"Of course," I said.

"Ah!" she cried hoarsely. "Then we are both in deadly peril--peril of
our own lives! These people will hesitate at nothing. Both you and I are
marked down by them, without a doubt. We must both be wary not to fall
into any trap they may lay for us."

Her very words seemed an admission that she was aware of the identity of
the conspirators, and yet she would give me no clue to them.

We went out and up the drive together to the kennels, where her father,
a tall, imposing figure in his shooting-kit, was giving orders to the
keepers.

"Hulloa, Gregg!" he cried merrily, extending his hand. "You'll make one
of a party to Glenlea to-morrow, won't you? Paton and Phillips are
coming. Ten sharp here, and the ladies are coming out to lunch with us."

"Thanks," I said, accepting with pleasure, for by so doing I saw that I
might be afforded an opportunity of being near Muriel. The fact that the
assassins were aware of our knowledge seemed to have caused her the
greatest apprehension lest evil should befall us. Then, as we turned
away to go back to the house, Leithcourt said to me--

"You know all about the discovery up at the wood the other day! Horrible
affair--a young foreigner found murdered."

"Yes. I've heard about it," I responded.

"And the police are worse than useless," he declared with disgust. "They
haven't discovered who the fellow is yet. Why, if it had happened
anywhere else but in Scotland, they'd have arrested the assassin before
this."

"He's an entire stranger, I hear," I remarked. And then added: "You
often go up to the wood of an evening after pigeons. It's fortunate you
were not there that evening, eh?"

He glanced at me quickly with his brows slightly contracted, as though
he did not exactly comprehend me. In an instant I saw that my remark had
caused him quick apprehension.

"Yes," he answered with a sickly smile which he intended should convey
to me utter unconcern. "They might have suspected me."

"It certainly is a disagreeable affair to happen on one's property." I
said, still watching him narrowly. And then Muriel at his side managed
with her feminine ingenuity to divert the conversation into a different
channel.

Next day I accompanied the party over to Glenlea, about five miles
distant, and at noon at a spot previously arranged, we found the ladies
awaiting us with luncheon spread under the trees. As soon as we
approached Muriel came forward quickly, handing me a telegram, saying
that it had been sent over by one of my uncle's grooms at the moment
they were leaving the castle.

I tore it open eagerly, and read its contents. Then, turning to my
companions, said in as quiet a voice as I could command--

"I must go up to London to-night," whereat the men, one and all,
expressed hope that I should soon return. Leithcourt's party were a
friendly set, and at heart I was sorry to leave Scotland. Yet the
telegram made it imperative, for it was from Frank Hutcheson in Leghorn,
and read--

_"Made inquiries. Olinto Santini married your servant Armida at Italian
Consulate-General in London about a year ago. They live 64B, Albany
Road, Camberwell: he is employed waiter Ferrari's Restaurant,
Westbourne Grove.--British Consulate, Leghorn"_

The lunch was a merry one, as shooting luncheons usually are, and while
we ate the keepers packed our morning bag--a considerable one--into the
Perth-cart in waiting. Then, when we could wander away alone together, I
explained to Muriel that the reason of my sudden journey to London was
in order to continue my investigations regarding the mysterious affair.

This puzzled her, for I had not, of course, revealed to her that I had
identified Olinto. Yet I managed to make such excuses and promises to
return that I think allayed all her suspicions, and that night, after
calling upon the detective Mackenzie, I took the sleeping-car express to
Euston.

The restaurant which Hutcheson had indicated was, I found, situated
about half-way up Westbourne Grove, nearly opposite Whiteley's, a small
place where confectionery and sweets were displayed in the window,
together with long-necked flasks of Italian chianti, chump-chops, small
joints and tomatoes. It was soon after nine o'clock when I entered the
long shop with its rows of marble-topped tables and greasy lounges of
red plush. An unhealthy-looking lad was sweeping out the place with wet
saw-dust, and a big, dark-bearded, flabby-faced man in shirt-sleeves
stood behind the small counter polishing some forks.

"I wish to see Signor Ferrari," I said, addressing him.

"There is no Ferrari, he is dead," responded the man in broken English.
"My name is Odinzoff. I bought the place from madame."

"You are Russian, I presume?"

"Polish, m'sieur--from Varsovie."

I had seen from the first moment we had met that he was no Italian. He
was too bulky, and his face too broad and flat.

"I have come to inquire after a waiter you have in your service, an
Italian named Santini. He was my servant for some years, and I naturally
take an interest in him."

"Santini?" he repeated. "Oh I you mean Olinto? He is not here yet. He
comes at ten o'clock."

This reply surprised me. I had expected the restaurant-keeper to express
regret at his disappearance, yet he spoke as though he had been at work
as usual on the previous day.

"May I have a liqueur brandy?" I asked, seeing that I would be compelled
to take something. "Perhaps you will have one with me?"

"Ach no! But a kümmel--yes, I will have a kümmel!" And he filled our
glasses, and tossed off his own at a single gulp, smacking his lips
after it, for the average Russian dearly loves his national decoction of
caraway seeds.

"You find Olinto a good servant, I suppose?" I said, for want of
something else to say.

"Excellent. The Italians are the best waiters in the world. I am
Russian, but dare not employ a Russian waiter. These English would not
come to my shop if I did."

I looked around, and it struck me that the trade of the place mainly
consisted in chops and steaks for chance customers at mid-day, and tea
and cake for those swarms of women who each afternoon buzz around that
long line of windows of the "world's provider." I could see that his was
a cheap trade, as revealed by the printed notice stuck upon one of the
long fly-blown mirrors: "Ices _4d_ and _6d_."

"How long has Olinto been with you?" I inquired.

"About a year--perhaps a little more. I trust him implicitly, and I
leave him in charge when I go away for holidays. He does not get along
very well with the cook--who is Milanese. These Italians from different
provinces always quarrel," he added, laughing. "If you live in Italy you
know that, no doubt."

I laughed in chorus, and then glancing at my watch, said: "I'll wait for
him, if he will be here at ten. I'd much like to see him again."

The Russian was by no means nonplused, but merely remarked--

"He is late sometimes, but not often. He lives on the other side of
London--over at Camberwell." His confidence that the waiter would return
struck me as extremely curious; nevertheless I possessed myself in
patience, strolled up and down the restaurant, and then stood watching
the traffic in the Grove outside.

The man Odinzoff seemed a quick, hard-working fellow with a keen eye to
business, for he fell to polishing the top of the marble tables with a
pail and brush, at the same time directing the work of the
pallid-looking youth. Suddenly a side door opened, and the cook put his
head in to speak with his master in French. He was a typical Italian,
about forty, with dark mustaches turned upwards, and an easy-going,
careless manner. Seeing me, however, and believing me to be a customer,
he turned and closed the door quickly. In that instant I noticed the
high broadness of his shoulders, and his back struck me as strangely
similar to that of the man in brown whom we had seen disappearing in
Rannoch Wood.

The suspicion held me breathless.

Was this Russian endeavoring to deceive me when he declared that Olinto
would arrive in a few minutes? It seemed curious, for the man now dead
must, I reflected, have been away at least four days. Surely his
absence from work had caused the proprietor considerable inconvenience?

"That was your cook, wasn't it? The Milanese who is quarrelsome?" I
laughed, when the side door had closed.

"Yes, m'sieur. But Emilio is a very good workman--and very honest, even
though I had constantly to complain that he uses too much oil in his
cooking. These English do not like the oil."

I stood in the doorway again watching the busy throng passing outside
towards Royal Oak. Ten o'clock struck from a neighboring church, and I
still waited, knowing only too well that I waited in vain for a man
whose body had already been committed to the grave outside that far-away
old Scotch town. But I waited in order to ascertain the motive of the
bearded Russian in leading me to believe that the young fellow would
really return.

Presently Odinzoff went outside, carrying with him two boards upon which
the menu of the "Eight-penny Luncheon! This Day!" was written in scrawly
characters, and proceeded to affix them to the shop-front.

This was my opportunity, and quick as thought I moved towards where the
unhealthy youth was at work, and whispered:

"I'll give you half-a-sovereign if you'll answer my questions
truthfully. Now, tell me, was the cook, the man I've just seen, here
yesterday?"

"Yes, sir."

"Was he here the day before?"

"No, sir. He's been away ill for four days."

"And your master?"

"He's been away too, sir."

I had no time to put any further question, for the Russian re-entered at
that moment, and the youth busied himself rubbing the front of the
counter in pretense that I had not spoken to him. Indeed, I had some
difficulty in slipping the promised coin into his hand at a moment when
his master was not looking.

Then I paced up and down the restaurant, waiting patiently and wondering
whether the absence of Emilio had any connection with the tragedy up in
Rannoch Wood.

While I stood there a rather thin, respectably-dressed man entered, and
seating himself upon one of the plush lounges at the further end,
removed his bowler hat and ordered from the proprietor a chop and a pot
of tea. Then, taking a newspaper from his pocket, he settled himself to
read, apparently oblivious to his surroundings.

And yet as I watched I saw that over the top of his paper he was
carefully taking in the general appearance of the place, and his eyes
were keenly following the Russian's movements. The latter shouted--in
French--the order for the chop through the speaking-tube to the man
Emilio, and then returning to his customer he spread out a napkin and
placed a small cruet, with knife, fork, and bread before him. But the
customer seemed immersed in his paper, and never looked up until after
the Russian's back was turned. Then so deep was his interest in the
place, and so keen those dark eyes of his, that the truth suddenly
dawned upon me. Mackenzie had telegraphed to Scotland Yard, and the
customer sitting there was a detective who had come to investigate. I
had advanced to the counter to chat again with the proprietor, when a
quick step behind me caused me to turn.

Before me stood the slim figure of a man in a straw hat and rather seedy
black jacket.

"_Dio Signor Padrone!_" he cried.

I staggered as though I had received a blow.

Olinto Santini in the flesh, smiling and well, stood there before me!




CHAPTER VIII

LIFE'S COUNTER-CLAIM


No words of mine can express my absolute and abject amazement when I
faced the man, whom I had seen lying cold and dead upon that gray stone
slab in the mortuary at Dumfries.

My eye caught the customer who, on the entry of Olinto, had dropped his
paper and sat staring at him in wonderment. The detective had evidently
been furnished with a photograph of the dead man, and now, like myself,
discovered him alive and living.

"Signor Padrone!" cried the man whose appearance was so absolutely
bewildering. "How did you find me here? I admit that I deceived you when
I told you I worked at the Milano," he went on rapidly in Italian. "But
it was under compulsion--my actions that night were not my own--but
those of others."

"Yes, I understand," I said. "But come out into the street. I don't wish
to speak before these people. Your padrone knows Italian, no doubt."

"Ah! only a very little," he answered, smiling. "Have no fear of him."

"But there is Emilio, the cook?"

"Then you have met him!" he exclaimed quickly, with a strange look of
apprehension. "He is an undesirable person, signore."

"So I gather," I answered. "But I desire to speak to you outside--not
here." And then turning with a smile to the Pole, I apologized for
taking away his servant for a few minutes. "Recollect, I am his old
master, I added."

"Of course, m'sieur," answered the Pole, bowing politely. "Speak with
him where and how long you will. He is entirely at your service."

And when we were outside in Westbourne Grove, Olinto walking by my side
in wonderment, I asked suddenly:

"Tell me. Have you ever been in Scotland--at Dumfries?"

"Never, signore, in my life. Why?"

"Answer me another question," I said quickly. "You married Armida at the
Italian Consulate. Where is she now--where is she this morning?"

He turned pale, and I saw a complete change in his countenance.

"Ah, signore!" he responded, "I only wish I could tell."

"It is untrue that she is an invalid," I went on, "or that you live in
Lambeth. Your address is in Albany Road, Camberwell. You can't deny
these facts."

"I do not deny them, Signor Commendatore. But how did you learn this?"

"The authorities in Italy know everything," I answered. "Like that of
all your countrymen, your record is written down at the Commune."

"It is a clean one, at any rate, signore," he declared with some slight
warmth. "I have a permesso to carry a revolver, which is in itself
sufficient proof that I am a man of spotless character."

"I cast no reflection whatever upon you, Olinto," I answered. "I have
merely inquired after your wife, and you do not give me a direct reply."

We had walked to the Royal Oak, and stood talking on the curb outside.

"I give you no reply, because I can't," he said in Italian. "Armida--my
poor Armida--has left home."

"Why did you tell me such a tale of distress regarding her?"

"As I have already explained, signore, I was not then master of my own
actions. I was ruled by others. But I saved your life at risk of my own.
Some day, when it is safe, I will reveal to you everything."

"Let us allow the past to remain," I said. "Where is your wife now?"

He hesitated a moment, looking straight into my face.

"Well, Signor Commendatore, to tell the truth, she has disappeared."

"Disappeared!" I echoed. "And have you not made any report to the
police?"

"No."

"Why not?"

"For reasons known only to myself I did not wish the police to pry into
my private affairs."

"I know. Because you were once convicted at Lucca of using a knife--eh?
I recollect quite well that affair--a love affair, was it not?"

"Yes, Signor Commendatore. But I was a youth then--a mere boy."

"Then tell me the circumstances In which Armida has disappeared," I
urged, for I saw quite plainly that his sudden meeting with me had upset
him, and that he was trying to hold back from me some story which he was
bursting to tell.

"Well, signore," he said at last in a low tone of confidence, "I don't
like to trouble you with my private affairs after those untruths I told
you when we last met."

"Go on," I said. "Tell me the truth."

After the exciting incidents of our last meeting, I was half inclined
to doubt him.

"The truth is, Signor Commendatore, that my wife has mysteriously
disappeared. Last Saturday, at eleven o'clock, she was talking over the
garden wall with a neighbor and was then dressed to go out. She
apparently went out, but from that moment no one has seen or heard of
her."

It was on the tip of my tongue to tell him the ghastly truth, yet so
strange was the circumstance that his own double, even to the mole upon
his face, should be lying dead and buried in Scotland that I hesitated
to relate what I knew.

"She spoke English, I suppose?"

"She could make herself understood very well," he said with a sigh, and
I saw a heavy, thoughtful look upon his brow. That he was really devoted
to her, I knew. With the Italian of whatever station in life, love is
all-consuming--it is either perfect love or genuine hatred. The Tuscan
character is one of two extremes.

I glanced across the road, and saw that the detective who had ordered
his chop and coffee had stopped to light his pipe and was watching us.

"Have you any idea where your wife is, or what has induced her to go
away from home? Perhaps you had some words!"

"Words, signore!" he echoed. "Why, we were the happiest pair in all
London. No unkind word ever passed between us. There seems absolutely no
reason whatever why she should go away without wishing me a word of
farewell."

"But why haven't you told the police?"

"For reasons that I have already stated. I prefer to make inquiries for
myself."

"And in what have your inquiries resulted?"

"Nothing--absolutely nothing," he said gravely.

"You do not suspect any plot? I recollect that night in Lambeth you
told me that you had enemies?"

"Ah! so I have, signore--and so have you!" he exclaimed hoarsely. "Yes,
my poor Armida may have been entrapped by them."

"And if entrapped, what then?"

"Then they would kill her with as little compunction as they would a
fly," he said. "Ah! you do not know the callousness of those people. I
only hope and pray that she may have escaped and is in hiding somewhere,
and will arrive unexpectedly and give me a startling surprise. She
delights in startling me," he added with a laugh.

Poor fellow, I thought, she would never again be able to startle him.
She had actually fallen a victim just as he dreaded.

"Then you think she must have been called away from home by some urgent
message?" I suggested.

"By the manner in which she left things, it seemed as though she went
away hurriedly. There were five sovereigns in a drawer that we had saved
for the rent, and she took them with her."

I paused again, hesitating whether to tell him the terrible truth. I
recollected that the body had disappeared, therefore what proof had I of
my allegation that she had been murdered?

"Tell me, Olinto," I said as we moved forward again in the direction of
Paddington Station, "have you any knowledge of a man named Leithcourt?"

He started suddenly and looked at me.

"I have heard of him," he answered very lamely.

"And of his daughter--Muriel?"

"And also of her. But I am not acquainted with them--nor, to tell the
truth, do I wish to be."

"Why?"

"Because they are enemies of mine--bitter enemies."

His declaration was strange, for it threw some light upon the tragedy in
Rannoch Wood.

"And of your wife also?"

"I do not know that," he responded. "My enemies are my wife's also, I
suppose."

"You have not told me the secret of that dastardly attempt upon me when
we last met," I said in a low voice. "Why not tell me the truth? I
surely ought to know who my enemies really are, so as to be warned
against any future plot."

"You shall know some day, signore. I dare not tell you now."

"You said that before," I exclaimed with dissatisfaction. "If you are
faithful to me, you ought at least to tell me the reason they wished to
kill me in secret."

"Because they fear you," was his answer.

"Why should they fear me?"

But he shrugged his shoulders, and made a gesture with his hands
indicative of utter ignorance.

"I ask you one question. Answer yes or no. Is the man Leithcourt my
enemy?"

The young Italian paused, and then answered:

"He is not your friend. I am quite well aware of that."

"And his daughter? She is engaged, I hear."

"I think so."

"Where did you first meet Leithcourt?"

"I have known him several years. When we first met he was poor."

"Suddenly became rich--eh?"

"Bought a fine house in the country; lives mostly at the Carlton when he
and his wife and daughter are in London--although I believe they now
have a house somewhere in the West End--and he often makes long cruises
on his steam-yacht."

"And how did he make his money?"

Again Olinto elevated his shoulders, without replying.

If he would only betray to me the reason he had been induced to entice
me to that house, I might then be able to form some conclusion regarding
the tenants of Rannoch and their friends.

Who was the man who, having represented the man now before me, had been
struck dead by an unerring hand? Was it possible that Armida had been
called by telegram to meet her husband, and recognizing the fraud
perpetrated upon her threatened to disclose it and, for that reason,
shared the same fate as the masquerader?

This was the first theory that occurred to me; one which I believed to
be the correct one. The motive was a mystery, yet the facts seemed to me
plain enough.

As the young Italian had refused to give any satisfactory explanation, I
resolved within myself to wait until the unfortunate woman's body was
recovered before revealing to him the ghastly truth. Without doubt he
had some reason in withholding from me the true facts, either because he
feared that I might become unduly alarmed, or else he himself had been
deeply implicated in the plot. Of the two suggestions, I was inclined to
believe in the latter.

He walked with me as far as the end of Bishop's Road, endeavoring with
all the Italian's exquisite diplomacy to obtain from me what I knew
concerning the Leithcourts. But I told him nothing, nor did I reveal
that I had only that morning returned from Scotland. Then at last we
parted, and he retraced his steps to the little restaurant in Westbourne
Grove, while I entered a hansom and drove to the well-known
photographer's in New Bond Street, whose name had been upon the torn
photograph of the young girl in the white piqué blouse and her hair
fastened with a bow of black ribbon, the picture that I had found on
board the _Lola_ on that memorable night in the Mediterranean, and a
duplicate of which I had seen in Muriel's cosy little room up at
Rannoch.

I recollected that she had told me the name of the original was Elma
Heath, and that she had been a schoolfellow of hers at Chichester.
Therefore I inquired of the photographer's lady-clerk whether she could
supply me with a print of the negative.

For a considerable time she searched in her books for the name, and at
last discovered it. Then she said:

"I regret, sir, that we can't give you a print, for the customer
purchased the negative at the time."

"Ah, I'm very sorry for that," I said. "To what address did you send
it?"

"The customer who ordered it was apparently a foreigner," she said, at
the same time turning round the ledger so that I could read. And I saw
that the entry was: "Heath--Miss Elma--3 dozen cabinets and negative.
Address: Baron Xavier Oberg, Vosnesenski Prospect 48, St. Petersburg,
Russia."

"Did this gentleman come with the young lady wh

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