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The Mysterious Mr. Miller

by William Le Queux · English · Gutenberg #41453 · 496,179 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: The Mysterious Mr. Miller

Author: William Le Queux


        
Release date: November 23, 2012 [eBook #41453]
                Most recently updated: March 23, 2025

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE MYSTERIOUS MR. MILLER ***




The Mysterious Mr. Miller
By William Le Queux
Published by Hodder and Stoughton, London.
This edition dated 1906.

The Mysterious Mr Miller, by William Le Queux.

________________________________________________________________________

________________________________________________________________________
THE MYSTERIOUS MR MILLER, BY WILLIAM LE QUEUX.

CHAPTER ONE.

A STRANGER IN SHEPHERD'S BUSH.

"Why!  Look! he's dead, doctor!"  I gasped, standing aghast.

The sudden change in the thin sallow face, the lack of expression in the
brilliant eyes, and the dropping of the jaw were sufficient to convince
me that the stranger's life had ebbed away.

The doctor bent, placed his hand upon the prostrate man's breast for a
moment, and then, straightening himself, he turned to me and answered
gravely:--

"Yes, Godfrey; it is as I feared from the first.  Nothing could save
him.  Remember what I told you this morning--it was simply a matter of
hours."

"He appears to have been a rather strong, athletic man," I remarked,
looking down upon the wan, furrowed face.

"Unusually so.  The disease, however, has thoroughly wrecked his
constitution.  He was addicted to the morphia habit of late."  And
pulling down the sheet he pointed to the marks of recent punctures upon
the dead man's forearm.

We were standing together in the small shabby bedroom of the
boarding-house wherein I lived in Granville Gardens, facing the
recreation ground close to Shepherd's Bush Railway Station.  The
stifling July day was at an end, and the narrow room was lit by the soft
hazy glow of the fast-fading London sunset.

Through the open window came the shouts of children at play upon the
"green" opposite, mingled with the chatter of the passers-by and the
ever-increasing whirr of the electric trams.  Within that faded,
smoke-grimed chamber of the dead was silence.  Upon the bed between us
lay the dead stranger--the man who was a mystery.

"Well, has he told you anything after all?" inquired my friend, Dr
Tulloch.

"Very little," was my reply.  "He was uncommunicative.  He had a reason,
I believe, for concealing his identity."

"Perhaps we shall discover something when we search his things," my
friend remarked.

"We'll do that to-morrow," I said.  "It isn't decent to do so at once."

Then, as Tulloch bent again, to reassure himself that his patient was
actually lifeless, a silence once more fell between us.  The glow of the
summer sunset deepened, shining through the smoke-haze, and lighting up
those dead features for a moment, but next instant the doctor, having
been satisfied that no spark of life remained, tenderly drew the sheet
over the white sphinx-like countenance.

The unfortunate man was a perfect stranger to us all.

On the previous day, at a little before six o'clock in the evening, he
had called upon old Mrs Gilbert, who with her daughter kept the
boarding-house where I chanced to be staying, and had, it appeared,
taken a top room, where his two leather portmanteaux were placed.  I
knew nothing of the man's advent until Miss Gilbert had tapped at the
door of the sitting-room and informed me that she had a new guest, a
foreign gentleman who could speak only a few words of broken English.

"This is his name," she said, handing me a scrap of paper whereon he had
written "Michele Massari."

"An Italian," I remarked.  "There is a noble family of the Massari, in
Ferrara.  He may belong to it."

"It's fortunate, Mr Leaf, that you speak Italian," Miss Gilbert said,
laughing.  "You'll help us if we are in any difficulty, won't you?"

"Most certainly," I assured her, for I knew that a foreigner is often a
great trouble in a purely English _pension_.  Many people speak French
or German, but few know Italian.

Then the landlady's daughter, a pleasant-faced, florid young woman of
about thirty, thanked me and withdrew.

The reason I found myself at Mrs Gilbert's _pension_ was in order to be
near my old schoolfellow, Sammy Sampson, who had made the place his
_pied-a-terre_ in town for several years past.  I had to spend six
months in London upon business affairs, therefore we had agreed to share
his sitting-room, a cosy little bachelor's den leading from his bedroom
at the back of the house.

An hour later at dinner the stranger made his appearance and, with my
consent, was placed next to me.  There were eleven guests in all--two
married couples of the usual _genre_ to be found in London
boarding-houses of that order, and the rest men with various occupations
"in the City."  We were usually a merry party, with Miss Gilbert at the
head of the long table, and the chatter was generally amusing.

The advent of the stranger, however, awakened every one's curiosity, and
as he took his seat, glancing sharply around, there fell a dead silence.

He was a tall, thin, wiry man with sharp aquiline features, hair with
silver threads in it, and fierce black moustaches carefully waxed.  His
eyes were black and penetrating, his complexion sallow, his cheeks
sunken, and the glance he gave at his fellow-guests was quick and
apprehensive, as though he feared recognition.

He wore evening dress, which was out of place at Mrs Gilbert's, and
also showed that he was not used to boarding-houses of that class.  And
as he bowed towards me and seated himself, I saw that upon his lean,
claw-like hand was a fine diamond ring.

All eyes were directed upon him, and at once I detected that, being a
foreigner, he was viewed with considerable disfavour and distrust.  The
guests at Mrs Gilbert's were not cosmopolitan.  The only foreigners
accepted at their own estimation in London boarding-houses are the
Indian law students.  Every girl believes her "tar-brush"
table-companion to be a prince.

Signor Massari ate his tinned soup in silence.  He had tucked the end of
his napkin into his collar in true Italian fashion, and from the fact
that attached to his watch-chain was a small golden hand with the
index-finger pointing, I put him down as a superstitious Tuscan.  That
hand was the survival of a mediaeval Tuscan charm to avert the evil eye.

Having spent some years of an adventurous youth in old-world Tuscany,
and being well acquainted with the soft musical tongue of the
flower-scented land, I ventured presently to make a casual remark with
my c's well aspirated, as became the true-born Florentine.

My companion started, looking at me in quick suspicion.  In his keen
piercing eyes was a glance of sharp apprehension and inquiry--but only
for a moment.  Sight of me seemed instantly to dispel his fears, and his
countenance resumed its normal appearance.  But his response was a
rather cold and formal one--in the _patois_ of the Genoese.  He
evidently desired that I should not put him down as Tuscan.

Though somewhat puzzled I allowed the incident to pass.  Yet I made a
mental note of it.  Signor Massari, I decided, was a somewhat queer
customer.  He was a man with enemies--and he feared them.  That fact was
quite evident.

We chatted in Italian, much to Miss Gilbert's fussy satisfaction, but
our conversation was rather formal and strained.  He had no intention,
it seemed, to have anything to do with his fellow-guests, and he only
tolerated me because it would have been uncivil not to do so.

A friend in Italy had recommended him to Mrs Gilbert's, he explained.
He had only arrived from the Continent at 4:50 that evening, and had
come straight there in a cab.

"Then this is your first visit to London?"  I asked.

"No," he replied.  "I was here once before--long ago."  And I thought he
sighed slightly, as though the recollection of the previous visit was
painful.

His was a sad face; hard, furrowed--a countenance that bore trouble
written indelibly upon it.  He ate but little, and drank only a glass of
mineral water.

I tried to get him to tell me from what province of Italy he came, but
he studiously avoided all my ingenious questions.  He spoke of Italy
vaguely, and yet with the tenderness of one who loved his fatherland.
Among all the nations of Europe, the Italian is surely the most
patriotic and the most eager to serve his country.

On several occasions remarks, meant to be courteous, were addressed to
him in English by my companions, but it was plain that he did not
understand our tongue.  Or if he did, he gave no sign.

Therefore, from the very first moment of his entry into our
boarding-house circle we put him down as a complete mystery.

Sammy Sampson, my irresponsible friend, sat opposite me and, as usual,
kept the table laughing at his clever witticisms.  Once I saw the
Italian scowl in displeasure, and wondered whether he had conceived the
idea that my friend was joking at his expense.

The stranger was not aware that I had detected the fierce look of hatred
that, for a single instant, showed in his dark shining eyes.  It was an
expression that I did not like--an expression of fierce, relentless,
even murderous resentment.

I was about to assure him of Sammy's utter disinclination to poke fun at
any foreigner, when I saw that if I did so I should only aggravate the
situation.  Therefore I let it pass.

The Italian was a man of refinement, exquisite of manner towards the
ladies as was all his race, and though I cannot explain it he struck me
as being well-born, and superior to those sitting at table with him.
Yet he vouchsafed but little as regards himself.  Italy was his home--
that was all.  And Italy is a great place; a country of a hundred
nations.  The Venetian is of a different race from the Sicilian, the
Tuscan from the Calabrian.  I still suspected he was a Tuscan, yet he
spoke the Italian tongue so well that at one moment I put him down as a
born Florentine, while at the next as a Livornese or a Roman.

He saw that I knew Italy and the Italians, and was purposely
endeavouring to mislead me.

That same night, just after midnight, Jane, one of the
maids-of-all-work, rapped at my door, saying:--

"Please, sir, the Italian gentleman's been taken awful ill.  We can't
make out what 'e wants.  Would you kindly go to 'im?"

I dressed hurriedly, and, ascending to the stranger's room, asked, in
Italian, permission to enter.

A faint voice responded, and a moment later I was at the stranger's
bedside.  The feeble light of the single candle showed a great change in
his countenance, and I saw that he was suffering severely and seemed to
be choking.

"I--I thank you very much, signore, for coming to me," he said, with
considerable difficulty.  "I am having one of my bad attacks--I--I--"

"Had you not better see a doctor?  I'll call a friend of mine, if you'll
allow me."

"Yes.  Perhaps it would really be best," was his reply, and I saw that
his hands were clenched in sudden pain.

Therefore, after telling Sammy of the foreigner's illness, I put on my
hat and went round into the Holland Road for my friend Tulloch.

The latter came with me at once, and as soon as I had interpreted the
stranger's symptoms, and he had made a careful examination, he turned to
me and said in English:--

"The man's very bad--cancer in the stomach.  He's evidently been near
death half a dozen times, and this will probably prove fatal.  Don't
frighten him, Godfrey, but just put it to him as quietly as you can.
Tell him that he's really very much worse than he thinks."

"Is it worth while to tell the poor fellow the truth?"  I argued.  "It
may only have a bad effect upon him."

"His other doctors have, no doubt, already warned him.  Besides it's
only fair that he should know his danger.  I never keep the truth from a
patient when things are desperate, like this."

"Then you hold out but little hope of him?"

Bob Tulloch, who had been with me at Charterhouse, stroked his dark
beard and replied in the negative, while the stranger, who had been
watching us very closely, said in Italian in a low faint voice:--

"I know!  I know!  I'm dying--dying!" and he laughed curiously, almost
triumphantly.  "I'm dying--and I shall escape them.  Ah! signore," he
added, with his bright black eyes fixed upon mine, "if you only knew the
truth--the terrible, awful truth--you would pity me--you would, I am
convinced, stand my friend.  You would not believe the evil that men say
of me."

"Then tell me the truth," I urged quickly, bending down to him in
eagerness.

But he only shook his head and clenched his even white teeth.

"No," he said, with a fierce imprecation in Italian.  "Mine is a
secret--her secret--a secret that I have kept until now--a secret that
none shall know!"

CHAPTER TWO.

TOUCHES A WOMAN'S HONOUR.

Tulloch left half an hour later, and Sammy, whose curiosity had been
aroused concerning the foreigner, entered the room and inquired after
the patient.

But hoping to learn more from the stricken man, I sent my friend back to
bed and remained there through the night, administering to the patient
what my friend Tulloch had ordered.

The long hours dragged on in silence.  Only the ticking of the cheap
American clock broke the quiet.  Lying upon his back the stranger fixed
his dark eyes upon me, until his hard gaze caused me quite an
uncomfortable feeling.  It is unpleasant to have a dying man's eyes
fixed so attentively upon one.  Therefore I shifted my chair, but even
then I could not escape that intent penetrating gaze.  He seemed as if
he were reading my very soul.

If I spoke he answered only in low monosyllables.  Whenever I attempted
to put a question he made a quick gesticulation, indicating his
impossibility to reply.  And so passed the whole long vigil until day
broke in brightening grey, and the sun shone forth again.

Yet the man's hard stony stare was horrifying.  Somehow it utterly
unnerved me.

Had Tulloch not declared that the fellow was dying, I should certainly
have left him; yet I felt it was my duty as a man to remain there, for
was I not the only person in that household acquainted with the Italian
tongue?

Ever and anon he clenched his teeth tightly and drew a long hard breath,
as though bitterly vengeful at thought of some incident of the past.

"_Accidenti_!" was an ejaculation that escaped his lips now and then,
and by it I knew that he was praying that an accident might befall his
enemies--whoever they were.  He uttered the most bitter curse that an
Italian could utter.

Presently, about five o'clock, just as the sun's rays entering through
the opening between the dingy old rep curtains fell across the
threadbare carpet in a golden bar, he became quiet again.

"Ah, signore," he said gratefully, "it is really extremely good of you
to put yourself out on my account--a perfect stranger."

"Nothing, nothing," I assured him.  "It is only what you would do for me
if I were ill in a foreign country where I could not speak the
language."

"Ay, that I would," he declared.  And after a pause he added: "Nearness
to death causes us to make strange friendships--doesn't it?"

"Why?"  I asked, somewhat puzzled.

"Well--in me, for instance, you are making a strange friend," he said,
with a queer, harsh laugh.

"Why strange?"

"Because you are utterly unaware of who or what I am."

"I know your name--that is all," I responded quietly.  "You know the
name by which I choose to be known here.  It is not likely that I should
disclose my real identity."

"Why not?"

"Because--well, there are strong reasons," was his vague answer, and his
mouth shut with a snap, as though he discerned that he had already said
too much.  Then a moment later he added: "As I've already told you, you
have made a strange acquaintance in me.  You will probably be surprised
if ever you really do ascertain the truth, which is, however, not very
likely, I think.  At least I hope not."

I recollected that he had spoken of a secret--some woman's secret--which
he intended, at all hazards, to preserve.  What was it, I wondered?

The thin drawn face upon the white pillow wore a wild, desperate
expression.  The stranger had actually laughed in triumph at the
suggestion of death.  A man must be desperate ere he can face the open
grave with a smile upon his lips.

After a few minutes he raised his thin yellow finger beckoning me
closer, and in a fainter voice said:--

"You are the only friend I have in this great capital, Signor Leaf,"--
for at table I had told him my name and something about my wandering
life on the Continent--"you will not allow them to bury me as a pauper?
There is money--see, in that left-hand top drawer--over there.  Will you
get my purse?"

I rose, opened the drawer he indicated, and handed him a bulky red
morocco wallet, one of those in which Italians carry their paper
currency.

He opened it and I saw that it was crammed with hundred-franc and even
thousand-franc notes.  In the wallet there was probably over a thousand
pounds.

"Will you take charge of it?" he asked, handing it back.  "I shall never
want it again.  Pay all the expenses, and I would ask of you one favour.
Upon the stone over my grave put no name--only the words: `In Memory of
one who was Unfortunate'--that is all."

"And the balance of the money--to whom shall I hand that?"

He thought a few moments, his eyes fixed upon the low, smoke-blackened
ceiling.

"If there is no just claimant within one year take five thousand francs
as a souvenir of me, and present the remainder to a hospital--whatever
hospital in London you think the most deserving.  You will also find the
directions for obtaining certain securities deposited in Italy.  Obtain
them and deal with them as you deem advisable."

"But have you no relations?"  I inquired, foreseeing a great difficulty
in carrying out these verbal instructions.

"Relations!  Bah! what are relations?" he cried excitedly.  "Only an
infernal encumbrance.  I suppose I have some somewhere--everybody has
more or less."

"And don't you know where yours are?"

"No, nor do I wish to know," he snapped.  "I am alone--you understand--
entirely alone.  And, moreover, I trust that if you are my friend, as
you seem to wish to be, you will so far respect my memory as not to
believe all that will probably be said against me.  To you only I admit
that I am not what I have represented myself to be--that is all.  I
accept your kindness, but, alas! with considerable shame."

I drew the Italian notes from the wallet, and counted them.

"There are twenty-eight thousand lire here," I remarked, "one thousand
one hundred and twenty pounds."

"What does it concern me how much there is?" he asked, smiling.  "Use it
as I've directed.  Indeed," he added, after a pause, "you need not tell
any one that you have it."

"I shall tell my friend Sampson, or people may think that I've stolen
it," I said.

"Yes," he remarked hoarsely, with a sigh, "people are always ready to
think ill of one, are they not?"

And then, as the bar of sunlight crept slowly across the worn-out
carpet, a deep silence again fell, broken only by the stranger's fierce,
vengeful mutterings which to me conveyed no distinct meaning.

"_Madonna mia_!" he cried aloud once, cringing in excruciating pain.
"How I suffer!  I wonder how long it must be before I give out.  _Dio_!
Is this the punishment of hell?"

Then he turned his eyes upon me--those wide-open, horrified eyes--in a
look the remembrance of which is even to-day still before me, the
recollection of which I shall carry with me to the grave.

There was something indescribable about that expression, uncanny,
fascinating, inhuman.  They were the eyes of a man who, though still
alive, was obtaining his first glance into the awful mysteries of the
eternity.

At half-past seven Tulloch returned and brought him a soothing draught,
so that he slept, and I then left the sick-room to dress and breakfast.

With Mrs Gilbert, Sammy and I agreed that no word of the painful affair
should be told to our fellow-guests, because illness in a boarding-house
always causes the visitors to make excuses for departure.  So we said
nothing.

Sampson had some urgent business with his solicitor in the City that
day, therefore I remained at home, acting as nurse to the unfortunate
man whose end was now so near.

Three times during the day Tulloch returned, but all he did proved
unavailing.  The stranger could not possibly live, he said.  It was a
wonder that he had had strength to withstand the journey to England.  It
was the reaction that was proving fatal--internal haemorrhage.

Just before six o'clock, when I crept on tiptoe back to the mysterious
man's darkened room to see if he still slept, he called me eagerly in a
low whisper, saying that he wished to speak to me in strict confidence.

I therefore seated myself at his bedside and bent down, so that the
effort of speaking should be as little as possible.

"There is still one further favour I would beg of you, Signor Leaf.  I
wonder whether--whether you would grant it?" he asked very feebly,
stretching out his thin hand until it rested upon my wrist.

"If it is within my power, I will," I assured him.

"Then you see this!" he exclaimed, drawing from beneath his pillow a
small flat packet in white paper about four inches square and secured by
three large black oval seals evidently impressed by some old monastic
seal of the middle ages.

"I want you," he said, "to accept the responsibility of this.  They are
papers of considerable value to certain relatives in Italy.  Will you
take charge of it, and three years after my death hand it intact to the
Italian Ambassador?  I appeal to you to do so, for you are my only
friend, and I am dying," he added, in a tone of intense earnestness.

"If you wish," I said, somewhat reluctant, however, to undertake such
responsibility.  And I took the packet, and, after examining the seals,
transferred it to my pocket.

The mysterious Massari firmly declined my offer to go to the Italian
Church in Hatton Garden and fetch a priest.

"I don't wish to see anybody," he snapped.  "I have a reason.  At least
let me die in peace."

And an hour later, just as Tulloch returned, he again fixed those bright
staring eyes upon me and silently passed away, carrying with him his
secret to the grave.

It concerned a woman.  That much he had admitted.  Who was the woman, I
wondered?  What was her secret?

"This man had a strange history, I feel convinced," I remarked in a low
voice to Tulloch as we left the chamber of death together and quietly
closed the door.

"Yes," he said.  "He seemed a queer fellow.  But in my profession, old
chap, we often meet strange people, you know.  Men, when they are dying,
frequently have curious fancies and extraordinary hallucinations."

And then we went down into Mrs Gilbert's sitting-room to inform her of
the unfortunate occurrence in her house.

I locked the sealed packet and the bulky wallet safely away in my
despatch-box, and when Sammy returned a little later I told him all that
had occurred.

My friend, a short, fair-haired, round-faced fellow of thirty-eight, a
splendid type of the muscular athletic Englishman, flung himself into
the big leather armchair with a cigarette and listened.  Like mine, his
life had been full of adventure.  Some years before he had thrown up his
commission in the Scots Greys in order to go on active service, anywhere
so long as there was fighting.  He had been through three South American
revolutions; had served with the Americans in Cuba; had been mentioned
in despatches for his services before Ladysmith, and was now
contemplating volunteering for service against the Mad Mullah.
Possessed of comfortable private means he was soldier, traveller,
big-game hunter and champion tennis-player, a good all-round man
bubbling over with good-humour, and a great favourite with the ladies.

"Well, Godfrey, old chap," he remarked, stretching himself out when I
had concluded my story.  "Certainly the fellow's a bit of a mystery.  Do
you know, I watched him very closely at table last night, and it somehow
struck me that he feared to be recognised.  Each time the door opened he
started and looked apprehensively in its direction.  Besides, a man of
his stamp doesn't usually come to a boarding-house of this sort.  He'd
go to the Savoy, or the Cecil.  Depend upon it he had a motive in coming
here, and that motive was in order to hide himself.  He may have done
something wrong in Italy and fled to London, as so many do.  Who knows?"

Truth to tell, my friend's suggestion exactly coincided with my own
suspicion.  Jane, the maid-of-all-work, had told me, to my surprise,
that when she had entered his room that morning during my absence he had
spoken to her in most excellent English!  The fact, too, that he had
refused to see a priest seemed to point to a fear lest his hiding-place
might be discovered.

But he was dead, and I had, rather unwisely perhaps, accepted a curious
responsibility.  Even the money he had placed in my charge might be the
proceeds of some theft!

That night I arranged with a neighbouring undertaker that the remains of
the stranger should be taken away on the following night when the whole
house was asleep, a service for which I received the heartfelt gratitude
of Mrs Gilbert.

About seven o'clock the next evening when I returned from the club, Miss
Gilbert met me excitedly in the hall, and asked whether I would mind
stepping into her mother's sitting-room for a moment.

Seated within, I found a tall, dark-haired, sweet-faced girl in neat
black who looked at me with shy inquiry as I entered.  I saw she was
very beautiful.  Her delicately moulded features were perfect, and upon
her cheeks was the fresh bloom of youth.  I judged her to be about
twenty-five, with slim, narrow-waisted, graceful figure, eyes of soft
dark brown, well-defined brows and tiny shell-like ears.  Her air and
manner was of the _chic_ Parisienne, rather than the Londoner.  The
instant our gaze met I saw that she was a woman of exquisite sweetness--
perhaps one of the most attractive I had ever seen in all my wide
wanderings over the face of the globe.

"This lady desires to see you, Mr Leaf," explained the landlady's
daughter.  "She has called with regard to our friend, Signor Massari."

I bowed to her, and as I did so she said quickly in English:--

"I am in active search of Signor Massari, and have come post-haste
across Europe in order to find him.  This lady says he has been here,
but has left.  You, I understand, speak Italian and have had several
conversations with him?"

I glanced quickly at Miss Gilbert.  She had not told the visitor the sad
truth, therefore I was compelled to sustain the fiction that the dead
man had left.

The landlady's daughter, apparently unable to further evade her
visitor's eager questions, excused herself and left us alone together.

The instant she had gone the visitor rose with a quick _frou-frou_ of
silken underskirts, and closing the door turned to me with a deep
earnest look, saying in a low voice scarcely above a whisper:--

"Let me confess the truth, sir!  I am in a most deadly peril, and yet
utterly defenceless.  I have come direct from Rome in order to overtake
the man who has called himself Massari.  I must find him, at all
hazards.  If he chooses to speak--to tell the truth--then he can save my
life.  If not, I'm lost.  Will you help me to discover him?  Perhaps you
know where he has gone?  I throw myself upon your sympathy--upon your
mercy.  See!" she cried hoarsely, with a wild look in her beautiful
eyes, for she was indeed desperate, "I am begging of you, a perfect
stranger, begging for my freedom, for my woman's honour--nay for my
life!"

I stood before her stunned.

What could I reply?  What would you have replied in such circumstances?

CHAPTER THREE.

GIVES SOME EXPLANATIONS.

Her voice was soft and refined.  She was evidently a lady.

The mysterious stranger had held the secret which might liberate her,
yet he had carried it with him to the grave!

Who was he?  Who was she?

The situation was certainly one of the most difficult in which a man
could find himself.  Miss Gilbert, in order to conceal the fact that a
death had occurred in her boarding-house, had pretended that Massari had
left.  I saw, however, that the pale-faced girl before me was desperate,
and felt convinced that the melancholy truth should be revealed to her.

The man's death sealed her doom.  She had made that entirely plain to
me.

I now distinguished that her dress was dusty, her dark hair slightly
dishevelled, and she bore traces of long travel.  She had evidently, on
arrival from the Continent, come straight from Charing Cross out to
Shepherd's Bush.  Therefore, by some secret means, she knew of Massari's
intention of hiding himself at Mrs Gilbert's.

"You do not reply," she said, in a voice full of reproach.  "Do you
really refuse to render me assistance, sir?  Remember, I am a helpless
woman who begs her life of you.  You have seen and spoken with that man.
Where is he now?"

For a moment I hesitated.  Then seeing that she must sooner or later
know the truth I drew my breath and said:--

"Come, follow me."  And opening the door we ascended the stairs.

"Ah!" she cried excitedly.  "He is still here!  That woman lied when she
told me he had gone, eh?  He is still in the house!"

I made no reply, but went on, she following closely behind.

Then a few moments later, having gained the top landing, I threw open
the door of the darkened chamber of death and drew aside the curtains.

She dashed to the bed and tore the sheet from the dead, white face.

Then she staggered back as though she had received a blow.

"My God!" she cried.  "Too late!--_too late_!"

Dull, dazed, she stood there, with the stare of blank despair in her
eyes and pale as ashes.  The dead white face seemed to wear a smile--the
smile of cheerful resignation, as though his body had parted with its
spirit in gladness and in triumph.

For a little while she stood stock-still and speechless--the living
dead!  Suddenly--ah! it is nothing in the telling; one should have heard
and seen to realise--suddenly there welled up from the depths of her
heart the sigh of its aching, the sob of its breaking.  Then she
shrieked with the ghastly laughter of despair.  Then she lashed out to a
cursing of the dead man and all his deeds; and her execrations were the
most shocking because they proceeded from the tongue of a sweet-mouthed
woman.

Of a sudden her eyes fell upon the stranger's two portmanteaux, and
dashing across she knelt to open them.

"No," I said quietly, "I cannot permit you to touch anything there."

"You cannot permit--_you_!" she cried, facing me.

"And who, pray, are you?  Have I not more right to know what he has here
than you?"

And with a sudden wrench she broke the hasp of the weak, foreign-made
lock, and next instant turned the whole of the contents, clothes and
papers, out upon the floor.

Quickly she searched among the quantity of papers, as though looking for
something.  Yet she was disappointed.

I took up several of the folded documents and found that they were bonds
and other securities.  It almost seemed as though the mysterious Massari
had fled at an instant's warning and taken all the valuables he had at
hand.

The second portmanteau resisted her efforts to break it open, therefore
I handed her the key.  If, as she said, that man had held her future in
his hands, she certainly had a right to look through what he had left
behind.

In her eagerness she tossed the papers hither and thither, now pausing
to scan a letter and now breaking open a sealed envelope and hastily
ascertaining the contents.

"No," she cried hoarsely at last, turning fiercely to where the dead
body lay.  "You have left no written record.  Brute! coward! assassin!"
she hissed between her teeth, shaking her fist in the dead man's face.
"You refused to give me my freedom--to clear my honour--you laughed in
my face--you who knew the truth but refused to speak!"

The scene was terrible, the living execrating the dead.  I took her by
the arm and tried to lead her away.  But she shook me off, crying:--

"He has died of the terrible disease with which God had afflicted him.
He knew, too well, that after his death I should be helpless and
defenceless.  He was wealthy, but what did all his wealth serve him--
compelled to fly at night and hide himself here, hoping that I should
not discover him.  He little dreamed that I knew of his hiding-place."

"Then he could have cleared you of some false charge, had he been so
inclined?"  I inquired, hoping that she would reveal the truth to me.

"Yes.  A foul dastardly charge has been made against me--one of the
cruellest and blackest that can be laid against a woman," she answered.
"By a word he could have established my innocence.  He knew I was
innocent, yet he refused--he laughed in my face, and told me that he
would not lift a little finger to help either me or my father."

"Why not?"

"Because the establishment of my innocence would have given me my
happiness."

"And he denied it to you.  He had a motive, I suppose?"

"Yes--oh yes!" she said.  "Even my tears did not move him.  I went upon
my knees and begged him to speak, but he was obdurate.  That was eight
days ago.  And how soon has Fate overtaken him!  Two days later he was
compelled to fly in secret in order to avoid arrest, and to-day he is
lying there dead--his lips, alas! sealed."

"Ah! unfortunately," I sighed, "he can no longer bear witness on your
behalf, miss--I have not the pleasure of your name?"  I said, hesitating
purposely.

"Miller--Lucie Miller," she replied.  "And yours?"

"Godfrey Leaf."

"Yes, Mr Leaf, it is unfortunate for me," she said, with a dark look of
desperation.  "I am a doomed woman!"

"Oh, no, you must not speak like that," I urged.  "Surely the charge
against you is not so very serious!"  To me it seemed impossible that
such a sweet-faced girl should have any grave imputation against her.

"I have enemies, bitter, relentless enemies," was her brief response.
She had grown a little calmer, and I had replaced the sheet over the
cold, lifeless countenance of the man who had refused to tell the world
the truth and thus save her.

"Have you travelled from Rome alone?"  I inquired.

"No.  I had a companion," she answered, but did not satisfy me whether
it was a male or female.

"You live in Rome, perhaps?"  I asked, for I saw that she had a
cosmopolitan air which was not that of an English-bred woman.

"No.  I generally live in Leghorn."

"Ah! in Tuscany.  I know Leghorn quite well--the Brighton of Italy, a
very gay place in summer.  Pancaldi's at four o'clock in the season is
always bright and amusing."

"You really know Pancaldi's?" she exclaimed, brightening.  "Only fancy!
We have so very few English in Leghorn.  They prefer Vallombrosa or the
Bagni di Lucca.  Indeed an Englishman in Leghorn, beyond the shipping
people, is quite a rarity."

"And this man Massari--it was not his real name?"  I said.

"No.  But I regret that I am not permitted to tell you who he really
was.  He was a person very well-known in Italy--a person of whom you
read frequently in the newspapers.  That is all I may tell you."

"Well, really, Miss Miller, all this is very mystifying," I said.  "Why
did he come here?"

"Because he thought that he would be able to live in hiding.  He feared
lest I might follow him."

"But you said that he also feared arrest."

"That is so.  He was compelled to escape.  His enemies laid a trap for
him, just as he did for my father and myself."

"But why did he refuse to give you back your happiness by clearing you
of the charge?  To me it seems almost incredible that a man should thus
treat an innocent woman."

"Ah!  Mr Leaf, you didn't know him.  He was one of the most
unscrupulous and hard-hearted men in the whole of Italy.  Every _soldo_
he possessed bore upon it the blood and tears of the poor.  He lent
money at exorbitant interest to the _contadini_, and delighted to ruin
them from the sheer love of cruelty and oppression.  Those papers
there," and she pointed to the securities she had scattered upon the
dingy carpet, "and every franc he possessed are accursed."

And he had given me the sum of two hundred pounds for accepting the
responsibility of his funeral and of the sealed packet.

"You mean that he was, by profession, a moneylender?"

"Oh, dear no.  He lent money merely for the purpose of ruining people.
He was heartless and cruel by nature, and if a man committed suicide--as
many did because he had ruined them--he would laugh at the poor fellow
as a fool, and take the very bread from the mouths of the widow and
family."

"The brute!  A Jew, I suppose?"

"No.  The people believed him to be one, but he was not.  In his methods
he was more fiendish than any Hebrew.  He did not lend money for profit,
but in order to bring misery to others.  The one kind, generous action
he might have performed towards me, the giving back to me my honour, he
refused.  To him, it was nothing; to me, everything.  It meant my life."

And I saw in her eyes a desperate look that deeply impressed me.

"I wish you would be more explicit, Miss Miller.  If I can be of any
service to you or assist you in any way, I shall be delighted.  Really I
don't like to hear you talk as you do.  If you are in a quandary there
must be some way out of it, and two heads, you know, are always better
than one."

She sighed, and raising her fine eyes to mine, replied:--

"Ah!  I fear, Mr Leaf, that your kind assistance would be unavailing,
although I thank you all the same.  That man yonder held my life in his
hand.  One word from him would have saved me.  But he refused, and
before I could overtake him Death had claimed him."

"He told me that he felt no regret in having to die," I said.

"Of course not.  Had he lived the truth would have been revealed, and he
would have dragged out his remaining days in a convict prison.  I know
that truth--a strange and startling one--a truth which would assuredly
amaze and astound you.  But he is dead," she added, "and though he
refused to give me back my honour and my life I will never seek a
vendetta upon one whom the Avenger has already claimed--one whom God
Himself has justly judged."

And together we turned, and left the silent chamber wherein lay the
remains of the man who was a mystery.

CHAPTER FOUR.

AROUSES CERTAIN SUSPICIONS.

Sammy chanced to be out, therefore I conducted her to our cosy little
sitting-room at the back of the house on the first floor, and after a
few minutes she had so far recovered from the shock of seeing her dead
enemy that she seated herself and allowed me to talk further to her.

I told her of the request which Massari had made respecting his epitaph,
and of his fearless encounter with death.

"Naturally.  He was unfortunate, and he wished to die," she said, quite
coolly.  "Had he lived he would only have fallen into disgrace and been
placed in the criminal dock."

"Towards me he was very pleasant, though not very talkative."

"Ah! you have had a narrow escape," she said, with her dark eyes fixed
upon me mysteriously.

"A narrow escape?  What of, pray?  I don't understand you."

"Of course not," she answered, smiling strangely.

"Tell me more," I said eagerly.  "This statement of yours is very
puzzling, and has aroused my curiosity.  Do you mean that Massari had
some sinister design upon me?"

She fixed her dark eyes upon me for a few moments, then said:--

"You were once, about three years ago, in Pisa--at the Minerva, I
think?"

I stood before her open-mouthed.  What did this sweet-faced woman know
regarding that closed page of my life's history?

Mention of that hotel in the quiet old marble-built city where stands
the wonderful Leaning Tower recalled to me a certain unsavoury incident
that I would fain have forgotten, yet could never put from me its
remembrance.

"Well?"  I asked at last, summoning all my strength to remain calm.
"What of it?"

She was silent for a moment, gazing straight into my eyes.

"Something occurred there, did it not?" she said slowly.

"And he knew of that?"

Then I recollected how the dying man had fixed his eyes upon me with
that hard, intense look; how his gaze had followed me about the room,
and I saw his fierce hatred and deep regret that while he himself was
dying I still lived.

Perhaps he had intended that our positions should be reversed, but God
had willed it otherwise.

Did Lucie Miller herself know what had taken place in Pisa?

I asked her point-blank, but from her replies I became reassured that
she was entirely ignorant of the real facts.  She knew that some
extraordinary incident that concerned me had taken place there--that was
all.

By what means had the stranger obtained knowledge of my secret?  To me,
her allegation that I had had some narrow escape seemed incredible.  I
could not discern sufficient motive.  Yet she repeated her allegation,
adding:--

"His motives were always hidden ones."

"Well," I declared, "to me the thing is really beyond credence.  I can't
see what I can have done to injure him.  Was it in connection with the
affair in Pisa, do you think?"

"I believe it was, but of course I'm not quite certain," was her
somewhat vague reply.  Perhaps she desired to mislead me.

The position was certainly a strange one.  Had the dead man been a
secret enemy of both of us?

The sweet face had changed as she sat with her neat patent-leather shoe
stretched forth upon the shabby hearth-rug.  It was even paler and more
serious, while her eyes were fixed upon mine with a curious, intense
gaze that caused me surprise.

"You have fortunately escaped," she said mechanically, after a brief
pause.  "I am, however, a victim, and doomed."

And sighing her eyes fell upon the carpet.

"But you will be able to clear yourself of this charge against you, Miss
Miller--you must--you will.  If the brute refused to clear you, then you
must find other means.  Why did he refuse?  What had he to gain by
refusing?"

"Everything," was her low, hoarse answer.  "If he had spoken the truth
and cleared me then a terrible vengeance would have fallen upon him.
But death overtook him instead."

I wondered whether I should tell her of the commission he had entrusted
to me, but decided that, for the present, I would say nothing.

"Are you returning at once to Italy?"  I inquired presently, for our
mutual connection with the dead man had aroused my curiosity concerning
her.  I longed to know who she was, and who was the man who lay in that
darkened upstairs room.

"I hardly know what my future movements are to be," she replied.  "I
came post-haste to London to face him and to compel him to speak and
clear me of the foul imputation against me.  Now that all is in vain--
now that the future holds no hope for me--I don't know what I shall do."

"You have friends in England, of course?"

"I have an aunt living in the country.  Perhaps I shall go to her.  I
must first hear what my father counsels, now that our enemy is dead."
Then after a pause she raised her eyes to mine and added: "I think you
are acquainted with a certain lady named Hardwick, are you not?"

I started.  She seemed to be aware of all my private affairs.  It was
extraordinary.  Surely these people had not spied upon me?

"I knew a lady of that name some time ago."

She smiled mysteriously, for she had watched my face and seen my
expression of surprise.

"And the recollection of her is not a very pleasant one, eh?"

"How did you know that?"  I asked quickly.

She shrugged her shoulders with that foreign air which showed her to be
a born cosmopolitan and laughed, but made no reply.  That she knew more
concerning me than she admitted was quite plain.

"And what has the woman Hardwick to do with the affair?"  I asked in
surprise.

"She is not your friend," she answered, in a low, serious voice.  "You
have seen her lately, I presume."

"I met her last while at supper at the Savoy about a fortnight ago," I
said.  "She then pressed me to go and dine with her."

"Of course.  Hitherto you had not seen her for several months."

"No.  She has been abroad, I understand."

"Yes.  In Italy."

"And she invited me with some sinister motive?"  I exclaimed in
surprise.

"She wishes to resume your acquaintance, and to regain your confidence.
It was, I think, part of an intrigue."

"I refused her invitation," I said.  "I had long ago discovered that she
was not my friend."

"That is fortunate.  Otherwise you might have cause to deeply regret it.
The woman is an adventuress of the worst type--a fact which I daresay
you are already aware of."

"I discovered it by mere accident, and for that reason I dropped her
acquaintance.  But what you have told me is utterly astounding."

"That man's end relieves you of all further anxiety, yet at the same
time it dooms me to shame--and to death!" she remarked hoarsely, rising
suddenly to her feet with quick resolution.

I made no remark.  What she had revealed to me was so bewildering.  That
the woman, before me had interests in common with myself was now plain.
She was in deep distress--in fear of what the dark future held in store
for her, abandoned by the one man who could clear her of this mysterious
allegation, so infamous that she dare not repeat it to me, a stranger.

Her grace and beauty, too, were assuredly incomparable.  Truly she was
one of the prettiest women I had ever met--yet at the same time the most
despairing.  I saw tragedy in her countenance--the shadow of death was
in her eyes, and I stood before her silent and fascinated by the mystery
which enveloped her.

"I must go, Mr Leaf," she said.  "I must telegraph to my father and
inform him of the _contretemps_ which has occurred.  He will direct me
how to act.  But before I go I would like to thank you very very much
for your great kindness and sympathy towards me.  I am sure that, if
possible, you would seek to assist me.  But it is out of the question--
entirely out of the question.  What must be, must be."

And she put out her small hand to me in farewell.

"There must, I am sure, be some way in which to evade this misfortune
which you apprehend," I said.  "At any rate we may meet again, may we
not?  Where shall you stay in London?"

"I really don't know," she said, in a vague, blank manner which showed
that she wished to evade me, fearing perhaps lest I might make unwelcome
inquiries concerning her.  "As to our meeting again, I hardly think such
a course would be wise.  My friendship might imperil you still further,
therefore let us end it now, as pleasantly as it has commenced."

"What do you mean?"  I asked.

"You will know what I mean, Mr Leaf, some day," she answered, with a
strange look in her dark eyes.  Then sighing she added: "Farewell."

And I was compelled to take the hand she offered.  Refusing to tell me
where she lived, and holding out no fixed promise of returning, she at
once went down with me to the front door.

After I had bowed farewell and she had descended the steps, I closed the
door, and was returning along the hall when suddenly Sammy emerged from
the dining-room, where he had evidently been standing, and facing me
with a strange, serious expression upon his features, such as I had
never seen there before, asked:--

"Godfrey! what's that woman doing here--in this house?  Do you know who
she is?  By Jove, you don't, that's certain, otherwise you would never
have let her cross this threshold.  Why has she dared to come here?"

CHAPTER FIVE.

THE VILLA DU LAC.

"Look here, Sammy!"  I exclaimed, when we were together in our little
den a few minutes later, "what's the good of beating about the bush?
Why don't you tell me straight out what you have against her?"

"My dear fellow! surely it isn't for me to cast a slur upon any lady's
character.  I merely warn you that she has a very queer reputation--
that's all."  And he stretched out his legs and blew a cloud of smoke
from his lips.

"Every woman seems to enjoy a reputation more or less queer nowadays," I
declared.  "Have you ever come across a woman about whom something
detrimental was not whispered by her enemies?  I haven't."

"Perhaps you're right there, Godfrey," was my friend's reply.  "You
discovered the truth concerning Ina Hardwick, and that was a hard blow
for you, eh?  But didn't I give you a hint long before which you refused
to take?"

"And now you give me a hint regarding Lucie Miller.  Well, tell me
straight out--who and what she is."

"First tell me why she came to see you."

"She certainly didn't come to see me," I protested.  "She came to see
the stranger--she's a friend of the dead man's."

He turned, knit his brows, and stared straight into my face.

"A friend of Massari's!  Who told you so?"

"She did."

Sammy smiled incredulously.  He was a man who had passed through life
having singularly escaped all the shadows that lie on it for most men;
and he had far more than most what may be termed the faculty for
happiness.

"H'm.  Depend upon it she came here more on your account than to visit
the mysterious Italian."

"But she saw Miss Gilbert and asked for Massari!"  I exclaimed.  "It was
Miss Gilbert who called me and introduced me.  I took her up to the dead
man's room, and the sight of him was a terrible shock to her.  She's not
exactly his friend; more his enemy, I think."

"How could she know Massari was here, pray?"

"Ah!  I don't know that.  The Italian was probably followed here after
his arrival at Charing Cross."

"Did she explain why the fellow came here?"

"Yes, she told me various things that have utterly stupefied me," I
answered.  "She hints that the Italian and the woman Ina Hardwick were
in league to take my life."

"Your life?" he cried.  "What absurd romance has she been telling you?
Why you didn't know Massari until yesterday!"

"That's just it.  But nevertheless there's some truth in what she
alleges.  Of that I'm quite convinced."

"Why?"

"For several reasons.  One is because she is aware of one curious
incident in my life, one of which even you, Sammy, are in ignorance.  It
is my secret, and I thought none knew it.  Yet Massari was aware of it,
and she also knows something about it, although, fortunately, not the
whole of the details."

Sammy twisted his small, fair moustache, and was puzzled.

"She actually knows a secret of yours, eh?  Then depend upon it she
intends to profit by it.  Be careful of her, that's all, Godfrey.  She
may have known Massari, for she's mixed up with a very queer lot.  But
it's quite evident that she came really to see you.  Did she enlist your
sympathies in any way; did she ask you to do anything for her--any
service, I mean?"

For a few moments I hesitated; then, in order to further convince him, I
told him all that had occurred, and repeated her strange story of how
the man we knew as Massari had refused to tell the truth and liberate
her.

"He probably had sufficient reason," declared Sammy, in a hard voice,
quite unusual to him.  "The truth, however, is quite plain.  She has
spread out her net for you, and you bid fair to fall an easy prey, old
fellow."

"But, my dear chap, I'm pretty wary.  Remember I'm thirty-two and am
past the adolescence of youth."

"She's uncommonly good-looking.  You've told me so yourself.  Admiration
is the first stage always," he sneered.

"But tell me what you know of her," I urged.  "Where did you first come
across her?"

"At Enghien, just outside Paris, nearly three years ago.  They lived in
a rather fine villa, the grounds of which went down to the lake.  You
know Enghien--a gay little place, with pretty villas and a casino on the
lake.  Brunet, the dramatic critic of the _Temps_, introduced her father
to me in the American bar at the Grand, and he invited me to go down to
his place and dine.  I did so, and found several other male guests, men
of the smartest sporting set in Paris--mostly Frenchmen.  At first I
believed Mr Miller was a person of means, but one day a man who said he
had known him, told me that he was a `crook'.  I admit I could not
discover what was the source of his income.  I only knew that his
friends were mostly rich racing men and _chevaliers d'industrie_, and
that he frequently gave very delightful dinners.  Though she never dined
with her father's friends, Lucie was often to be seen.  She seemed then
to be a mere slip of a girl of nineteen or so, extremely pretty, with
her dark hair dressed low and tied with a broad bow of black ribbon.
The men who frequented the place always addressed her as `_Bebe_,' and
would sometimes take her boxes of chocolate.  One evening after dinner
somebody suggested a hand at cards, when suddenly I caught Miller doing
a trick, and I stood up and openly denounced him.  It may have been
foolish of me, but I spoke without reflecting.  He denied my accusation
fiercely, and was supported by his friends.  Therefore I took my hat and
left the house, now convinced that the fellow was a `crook'.  After that
I made inquiries about him of a man who had been in the Paris _surete_
whom I know very well, with the result that I found the Englishman
enjoyed half a dozen aliases and was undoubtedly a queer character.  His
associates were mostly persons known to the police.  Even his butler at
the villa was a man who had `done' five years for burglary.  The theory
of my friend, the ex-detective, was that he was allied with a gang of
international thieves, those clever gentry of means who operate in the
principal cities throughout Europe, and who are so ingenious that they
in most cases outwit the police.  Though there was not sufficient
evidence to justify any direct allegation it was strongly suspected that
the source of Mr Miller's wealth at that moment was the proceeds of a
very cleverly planned robbery at the Commercial Bank in Bordeaux.  When
I told my friend how I had denounced Miller's trick, he looked grave and
said: `That was very injudicious.  Those people might seek revenge.'  I
laughed in derision, but he was so serious, and so strongly urged me to
be careful, that I began to repent my boldness in making the charge.
Miller and his friends were, so my friend told me, a dangerous lot."

"But if Lucie has the misfortune to have a father who is a scoundrel, it
surely is no reason why she herself should be bad?"  I remarked.

"You can't touch pitch without being soiled, my dear fellow.  Think of
the life of a young girl among such a crowd as that!  Ah! you've never
seen them--you can have no idea what they're like."

"But what direct charge do you allege against her?"  I asked.  "Speak
quite plainly, for I'm neither her friend nor her enemy.  She has to-day
told me certain things that have held me bewildered, and naturally I'm
all curiosity to ascertain something concerning her."

"Well," he said, casting himself again into the big chair and smoking
vigorously, "it was like this.  One day about a month afterwards there
came to stay with me at the Continental a wealthy young Chilian, Manuel
Carrera by name, whom I had first met when, two years before, we had
fought side by side in the streets of Valparaiso during the revolution.
He and I were partisans of the Government, of which his father was
Minister of the Interior.  Now that the Government had been restored he
occupied a very important post in the Treasury, and had come to Paris to
transact some business with the Banque de France.  At first we were
together every evening, and very often the greater part of the day, but
of a sudden he seemed to prefer to go about Paris alone, for he had, he
told me, met some other friends.  For a fortnight or so I had very
little of his company; but one afternoon he surprised me by saying that
he was going down to Enghien to make a call.  I offered to accompany
him, saying that I could amuse myself at a cafe while he was calling,
and that we might afterwards dine together at the Casino.  Truth to
tell, I had not been to Enghien since that well-remembered night, and I
wanted to see whether the Villa du Lac was still occupied.  To my
surprise, his destination proved to be that very villa.  He left me and
entered the big gates before I had time to warn him of Miller, therefore
I turned on my heel and took a cab to the cafe of the Casino situated on
the opposite shore of the lake.  Where I sat, at one of the little `tin'
tables beneath the trees, the water stretched before me, and beyond a
green, well-kept lawn and the big white villa were shining through the
trees.  I lit a cigar and sat wondering.  Suddenly across the lawn I saw
two figures strolling slowly.  One was a slim young girl in a white
muslin dress girdled with pale blue, her companion a man in grey
flannels and a panama.  Then the truth was plain.  My friend had fallen
in love with Lucie Miller.  His frequent absences were thus accounted
for.  I watched them as they sat together upon the garden seat facing
the lake, and saw that he was telling her something to which she was
listening very attentively, her head bowed as though in deep emotion.
Was he declaring his love, I wondered?  For fully half an hour they sat
there, when at last he rose, threw off his coat, and then both stepping
into the boat at the bottom of the lawn he slowly rowed her away up the
lake until behind the island they passed from my sight."

Sammy was silent, thinking deeply.  A sigh escaped him.

"And then?"

"What happened immediately afterwards will probably never be known," he
said, in a hard, hoarse voice.  "I only know that somewhere about nine
o'clock that same evening Carrera's despatch-box in his room at the
Continental was opened with its proper key, and Chilian Government
securities which he had only that day redeemed from the bank and
intended to carry back to Valparaiso as well as a lot of negotiable
bonds were all abstracted, together with a large sum in French
bank-notes--the value altogether being about eighty thousand pounds.  At
midnight the poor fellow lay in the same room with a bullet in his
brain.  He realised how he had been tricked; how the key had been taken
from his jacket pocket while he had taken the fair Lucie out upon the
lake, and in a fit of chagrin and despair he took his revolver and ended
his life."

"He committed suicide!"  I gasped.  "Didn't you see him after he went
out upon the lake; didn't you warn him?"

"No.  I meant to.  But, alas!  I was too late.  I waited an hour at the
Casino; then returned to Paris; and imagine my horror when I discovered
next morning what had happened."

"What did you do?"

"I went at once to the Prefecture of Police and gave information.  With
three detectives I went down to Enghien, but we found the Villa du Lac
uninhabited.  The mysterious Mr Miller and his pretty daughter had
already flown.  That was three years ago, and from that afternoon until
half an hour ago I have never set eyes upon the dark-eyed girl who so
cleverly assisted her father in his ingenious schemes."

"But are you sure she is the same?"  I asked.  "You admit that she has
changed."

"She has.  She's grown more beautiful, but she is the same, my dear
fellow--the same.  Is it any wonder that I hate her?"

CHAPTER SIX.

THE TRUTH ABOUT THE STRANGER.

I sat staring at my friend, unable to utter a word.

In the past twenty-four hours, through no fault or seeking of my own, I
had suddenly been plunged into a maze of mystery, and there had been
revealed to me a grave personal peril of which I had been in utter
ignorance.

What the sweet, open-faced girl had divulged to me had caused me much
amazement, yet this extraordinary story of Sammy's was utterly
dumbfounding.  I could not bring myself to believe that the girl who had
so simply confessed to me her distress had wilfully assisted her father
in robbing young Carrera, thereby causing him to take his life.  To me
it was utterly incredible.

Yet the fact that she had any connection with the mysterious Italian now
lying dead above caused me to ponder.  She knew the secret of that
incident in quiet old Pisa.  Yes.  She was a mystery.

Had she told me the actual truth?  That was the question which greatly
puzzled me.

Through the following day and the next when, with Sammy, I followed the
Italian to his lonely grave at Highgate, I recalled every incident of
that strange sequence of circumstances, and longed again to see and
question her.

Sammy, with that easy irresponsibility which was one of his chief
characteristics, declared that Lucie, for obvious reasons, would not
show herself again.  But, on the other hand, I argued that if his
allegation that she had come to Granville Gardens in order to meet me
were correct, then she would return.  She had, I pointed out, no
suspicion that he was there and had recognised her.  Therefore there was
nothing to prevent her seeking me.

The whole circumstances were both romantic and puzzling.

The very man who she had alleged had plotted with the woman Hardwick
against me had entrusted his most valuable possessions to me.  Why?  Had
the small kindness I had shown him turned his heart towards me?
Certainly he had paid me for my services--the sum of two hundred pounds.

Once or twice I wondered how I stood legally.  The man was dead, yet I
had a faint suspicion that I had no legal right whatsoever to administer
his estate.  There might be a will somewhere, and if legatees came
forward I might one day find myself in a very queer and awkward
position.

But I told Sammy nothing of this.  I deemed it best to preserve silence
both as regards the money and the curious packet that I was to keep
three years.

A week went by.  The man who had given his name as Massari had been
interred, the expenses paid, and life at Mrs Gilbert's had resumed its
normal quiet.  Indeed, not until three days after the funeral were the
other guests let into the tragic secret of the stranger's sudden death.
Then for a day or two the whole place was agog and various theories
formed.  In London a foreigner is always viewed with a certain amount of
suspicion, perhaps on account of our insular proclivities, perhaps
because the majority of Londoners know no other language beyond a
smattering of elementary French.

Often and often, when alone in our little den at the back of the house,
Sammy and I discussed the curious affair, but neither of us was able to
arrive at any satisfactory conclusion.

To be in order, I called in a solicitor named Price whom I knew, and a
week after Massari's death we opened his portmanteaux together and
examined the contents.

They presented several surprises.  Sammy was, of course, with us, taking
an eager interest in the affair and helping to examine the documents
which we found.  He was of little use, however, for they were mostly in
Italian, a language of which both my companions were almost entirely
ignorant.

The first fact I established was that the name of the deceased was not
Massari but Giovanni Nardini.  This surprised us all, for Nardini was
very well-known in Italy, having held the portfolio of Justice in the
Ministry overthrown only a week before, and having made himself
conspicuous in his perpetual war with the Socialist party in the
Chamber.  Only two days ago I had read telegrams from Rome in the
morning papers saying that there were serious charges against the
Minister of appropriating the public funds while in office, and that the
Government were considering what steps they should take for his
prosecution.

I had never connected the notorious Minister of Justice Nardini with the
stranger who had died so suddenly.  Yet had not Lucie Miller told me
that he was a person well-known in Italy?

"He was a thief who absconded, that's very evident," Sammy remarked
dryly.  "We shall perhaps find something interesting presently."

The lawyer Price and myself were seated at the table in the room where
the ex-Minister had died, and we both carefully examined paper after
paper, I reading aloud a rough translation.

Many of the documents were, I recognised, of extreme importance to the
Government.  Some were the official records of sentences pronounced by
the Tribunal upon various persons and had evidently been extracted from
the archives of the Ministry.

"I wonder what he intended to do with these?"  Price remarked presently.
"Perhaps his idea was to sell them to the persons who had been
condemned to enable them to destroy the record."

"Or perhaps he held them for the purposes of levying blackmail?"  Sammy
suggested.  "No man, if he were leading an honest life, would like to
have his police record hawked about."

"But here," I said, holding up a paper, "here are the confidential notes
of the President of the Court of Assizes at Milan concerning two very
important cases, showing the lines on which the prosecution was to be
conducted.  These would surely be of the utmost value to the prisoners,
for upon them they could form a complete defence.  The prosecution is a
political one, and the weak points in the evidence are indicated and
commented upon.  Yes," I added, "all these official documents have been
carried off because they could easily be turned into money.  We shall be
compelled to restore them to the Italian Government."

"His Excellency, when he fled from Rome, took care to carry away all he
could that was of value," remarked the solicitor.  "Fate, however, very
quickly overtook him before he had time to negotiate any of the
documents."

The letters occupied us some considerable time.  They were in two
packets secured by broad elastic bands, and all were, without exception,
letters from poor unfortunate victims who were in his clutches
financially and who begged for further time in which to pay.  Some of
them, written in illiterate calligraphy, were heartrending appeals for
wife, family, honour--even life.  They were the collection of a
hard-hearted man whose delight it was to crush and oppress rich and poor
alike.  The letters showed that.  More than one was full of bitter
reproach and withering sarcasm, revealing plainly that what the English
girl had said concerning him was the actual truth.

And yet in my short acquaintance with him prior to his decease I had
never dreamed that his character was as such.

Nevertheless at that moment, as I afterwards discovered, the Italian
press was full of bitter abuse of the man who for the past four years or
so had been one of the most popular in Italy.  But he had been found
out, and in ignorance of his death they were now hounding him down and
appealing to the Government to arrest and prosecute him.

We had nearly completed our investigation, Price taking a careful
inventory of the contents of the portmanteaux, when I discovered an
envelope in which was a large yellow printed form filled in with a
quantity of microscopic writing.

Within was a folded sheet of grey notepaper--a letter in Italian which I
read eagerly, holding my breath, for what was contained there staggered
me.

My companions watched my change of countenance in wonder.  And well,
indeed, they might, for it was the appeal of a desperate woman, a letter
that revealed to me an amazing truth--a letter signed "Lucie."

And when I had finished reading it, I sat there, staring as the written
lines danced before my eyes, amazed, unable to utter a single word in
response to their questions.

CHAPTER SEVEN.

DESCRIBES SOME CONFIDENTIAL DOCUMENTS.

I had no right to divulge the girl's secret to my two companions.  I
recognised this in an instant.

She had told me in confidence, and here was plain proof of what she had
explained.

"What is it?" asked Price.  "Something that surprises you?"

"Well, yes," I answered as carelessly as I could.  "It's a letter from a
woman."

"From Lucie Miller!" cried Sammy, whose sharp eyes had caught the
signature.  "What does she say?  Tell us," he asked eagerly.

"No," I said firmly.  "Recollect that whatever or whoever this man is,
he is dead.  Therefore let his private affairs rest.  It is surely no
concern of ours."

"No--of yours, perhaps," my friend laughed.  "Remember what I told you
about her."

"I recollect every word."

"And yet you are all the time anxious to meet her again, Godfrey!  Do
you know, I really believe the girl has captivated you--like she has so
many others."

"You don't take me for a fool--do you?"  I snapped, rather annoyed.
"She was in distress and I am wondering if she has yet extricated
herself."

Price made inquiry as to whom we were discussing, but in a few quick
sentences I satisfied his curiosity.

"I should be very sorry if she ever comes here again," declared Sammy.
"I have no wish to meet her.  The memory of my poor friend Carrera is
far too painful."

"You believe, then, that his death was due to her--that she induced him
to leave his jacket upon the lawn?"

"I make no direct charge, my dear fellow.  I only say that she's
daughter of one of the most ingenious `crooks' in Europe--a member, if
not the actual leader, of one of the cleverest of the international
gangs.  They are possessed of ample means, and the police are no match
for their ingenuity."

"You have your opinion, my dear old chap; I have mine," I said, glancing
round the room and recollecting vividly how she had stood there and
looked upon the white drawn face of the man who had refused to extricate
her from her deadly peril.

He took up the yellow paper, glanced it over, and put it down again
without being able to make anything out of it.

I said I would translate it later, and placed it aside, together with
the strange letter of appeal.

Neither of my companions was very well satisfied, I could see.  They
wished to know what the mysterious Lucie had written, while I, on my
part, was equally determined not to tell them.  It was surely not fair
to her to divulge what had been meant for Nardini's eye alone;
therefore, I intended to keep possession of the letter, and to hand it
to her to destroy, should we ever meet again.

Now that I recall those hours following the stranger's decease and the
English girl's mysterious visit I cannot even now explain why I so
suddenly commenced to take an interest in her.  She was beautiful, it
was true, but man-of-the-world that I was, and a constant wanderer
across the face of Europe, I knew dozens of women quite as graceful, if
not even more beautiful.  Besides, there was the dark stigma upon her
which Sammy had alleged, and which, by what I had now discovered, seemed
fully borne out.

No.  I think the mystery of the affair was responsible for my undue
interest in her.  Sammy, of course, put it down to her personal
attractions, but he was decidedly and distinctly in error.  She had told
me of her perilous position, and of the dead man's refusal to assist
her.  Therefore it was but natural that I was curious to know how she
fared.

Again, was she not in some mysterious way acquainted with a secret of my
own life?  Perhaps it was also that fact which caused me a longing to
know the real truth concerning her.

There was certainly nothing of the adventuress about her.  She was
quiet, refined, graceful, neatly dressed, and spoke with easy, well-bred
accents that were essentially those of a lady.

I do not think my worst enemy has ever declared me to be impressionable
where women were concerned, for truth to tell, an incident that had
occurred four years before had soured my life, and caused my resolution
to ever remain a bachelor.

Ah!  It was all over--the old story of the mad passion of a man for one
who proved--well, unworthy.  Ah! how I had adored my Ella; how I
worshipped the very ground upon which she trod; how I would have
conquered the very world for her sake.  Yes.  I saw her now, so young in
her white muslin dress with her gold-brown hair falling upon her
shoulders, her laughing blue eyes, and the red rose in her breast as we
walked that June afternoon along those white English cliffs with the
blue Channel at our feet.  That never-to-be-forgotten afternoon we
pledged our love, our hot lips met in their first fierce caress, our
hearts beat in unison.  She was my all in all.  For months we lived in a
world that was entirely our own--a bright rosy world of high ideals and
ineffable sweetness, for we loved, ay we loved in a manner, I believe,
that man and maiden never loved before.  Even the remembrance of it now
was sweet and yet--ah! so intensely bitter.

But why need I trouble you with that incident of long ago?  Suffice it
to say that my little Ella preferred money to a man's love, and she
became engaged to a stout, grey-haired fellow old enough to be her
father.  Six months later she sickened, and then I heard that she was
dead.  Ah! the blow was to me terrible!  I became from that day a
changed man.

Since my little Ella preferred money to my love, I had again been
wandering hither and thither, a careless, aimless man, just as I had
wandered before meeting her.  If I had had a profession it would have
been different, but my father committed the unpardonable folly of
leaving me comfortably off, therefore I simply developed into an idler,
preferring life at the gay continental resorts--now in Monte Carlo, now
in Paris, now in Rome, or elsewhere, just as my inclinations led me--to
the dull humdrum existence of chambers in London.  Ella--Ella!  I
thought of none save of my sweet dead love, now lost to me for ever.

Therefore, when Sammy hinted that I had become bewitched by Lucie Miller
I firmly and frankly denied such assertion.  Four years is a breach in a
man's life, but even four years had not caused me to forget my first and
only true passion--the passion that had ended so tragically.  Sometimes
life does not count by years.  Some suffer a lifetime in a day, and so
grow old between the rising and the setting of the sun.

When Price had concluded the inventory of the dead man's papers, I
sorted out all those which had any official bearing.  Perhaps I ought to
have communicated at once with the Italian Consulate, seeing that the
dead man was an Italian subject, but at the time it never occurred to
me.  The papers which had so evidently been abstracted from the archives
of the Ministry of Justice in Rome I tied up in a bundle and placed them
apart.  The others, with the exception of the yellow folio and the
letter of appeal, we replaced in the portmanteaux.

Later that afternoon, when alone, I drew out the letter again and
re-read it.  Translated into English it was as follows:--

  "Your Excellency Signor Nardini--For the last time I throw myself upon
  your charity and ask you to speak and clear me of this disgraceful
  allegation they have made against me.  You alone know that I am
  entirely innocent.  You alone know that on the evening of the affair I
  was at the Villa Verde.  Therefore, how could I have been in Rome?
  How can I be culpable?  A single word from you will vanquish these
  lying, unscrupulous enemies of mine who have thus attacked my honour
  and seek to connect me with an affair of which I swear I am in utter
  ignorance.

  "Surely you will not refuse to make this one single declaration to
  save me!  Reflect well all that it means to me--this disgraceful
  accusation against my honour.  I know your reluctance.  You fear that
  your own admission that I was at your villa out at Tivoli on that
  night may give rise to some scandalous gossip.  But will you not risk
  it in order to save a woman's life?  Shall I not suffer more than
  you--a man?  Yet I am quite ready to face the scandal of our names
  being connected in order to free myself from this most disgraceful
  charge.  Say what you wish concerning me--tell all you know, if it
  suits your purpose--only I pray of you to shield me from these fierce,
  relentless enemies of mine.

  "I, a defenceless and desperate woman, beg of you to speak the truth
  and clear me.  Will you not hear my appeal?

  "To-morrow, at noon, I shall call upon you personally for a reply.

  "Speak--speak, I beg of you most humbly and with all my heart.  You
  are the only person who can save me, and I pray that God in His
  justice may direct your action of mercy.  Lucie."

Was not the truth plainly written there?  Surely she had not misled me
in her motive in coming to England, to make one final appeal to the man
whose lips had, alas! been closed by death!

I re-read the piteous letter, sighing the while.  Every word of it
showed her mad desperation at being unable to prove her innocence of
this mysterious allegation.  The reason of the man's silence was now
obvious.  If he had spoken he would have had to tell the truth--which
from her letter appeared to be an unpleasant one and likely to cause
scandal.  Yet she asserted that she was fearless of anything the world
might say; therefore did not that very fact suggest that there was no
ground for any scandal?

Then I opened the yellow official paper which had been preserved with
the letter of appeal.

Headed "_Amministrazione di Pubblica Sicurezza_" and bearing the number
28,280, it was, I saw, the Italian police record regarding an Englishman
named James Harding Miller, son of William Miller, born at Studland, in
Dorsetshire, widower, and resident in Rome.  After the name and the
statement that he was sometimes known as Milner, a minute description
was given of the person whom the record concerned, and in that column
headed "Connotati," or personal appearance, was the following:--

  Statura: alto.
  Corporature: secco.
  Colorito: bruno.
  Capelli: castagna.
  Barba: c.
  Occhi: c.
  Naso: greco.
  Bocca: reg.
  Fronte: guista.
  Segni: porta lenti.

The meaning of this was that Mr Milner, or Miller, was tall of stature,
dark complexion, chestnut beard, hair and eyes, Greek nose, and that he
habitually wore pince-nez.  In fact upon the back of the document were
pasted four photographs, taken in different positions, and probably by
different photographers.

The information contained in the record was, however, of more interest
to me, and I read it through very carefully from end to end.

Briefly, what was chronicled there was to the effect that the Englishman
Miller had on several occasions been suspected of being implicated in
various schemes of fraud in association with certain persons against
whom were previous convictions.  It appeared that so strong were the
suspicions concerning him in the case of an extensive fraud upon
French's bank in Florence by means of forged securities two years before
that Miller was arrested, but after exhaustive inquiries was allowed his
freedom as there was insufficient evidence.

The lines of even writing went on to state: "The man's daughter, Lucie
Lilian Miller, is constantly with him, and may participate in his
schemes.  There is, however, no direct allegation against her."  Miller,
it continued, evidently possessed a secret source of income which was
believed to be derived from dishonest sources, though the actual truth
had not yet been discovered.  The record ended with the words added as a
postscript in another handwriting: "After exhaustive inquiries made by
the Questura in Rome, in Florence and in Leghorn, it is now established
beyond doubt that the Englishman is in active communication with a
clever international association of `sharpers'."

After reading that I was compelled to accept the truth of Sammy's
statement.  The man Miller had evidently plotted and obtained the
securities in the young Chilian's despatch-box.

Yet had Lucie, I wondered, any knowledge of that dastardly conspiracy
which had ended in a tragedy?

CHAPTER EIGHT.

"THE MYSTERIOUS MR MILLER."

On the following day, about noon, I took a cab to the Italian Embassy,
that fine stone-built mansion in Grosvenor Square.

A tall footman with powdered hair asked me into the great reception-room
where, at one end, hung a great portrait of the late King Humbert, the
other end of the room opening upon a large conservatory where stood a
grand piano.  It was a sombre apartment, furnished with solid,
old-fashioned taste and embellished with a number of photographs of
noteworthy persons presented to the popular Ambassador and his wife in
the various cities wherein His Excellency had represented his sovereign.

Like most London reception-rooms, it looked its best at night under the
myriad electric lamps.  At noon, as I sat there, it looked a trifle too
dull and gloomy.  Presently one of the staff of the Embassy, a short,
pleasant-faced, elderly Italian of charming manner, and speaking perfect
English, greeted me courteously and inquired the object of my request to
see His Excellency.

"I have called," I said, "in order to give some confidential information
which may be of interest to His Excellency.  The fact is I have been
present at the death of the ex-Minister for Justice Nardini."

"His death!" exclaimed the pleasant official.  "What do you mean?  Is he
dead?"

"He died here, in London, and unrecognised.  It was only on searching
his papers that I discovered his identity.  He came to an obscure
boarding-house in Shepherd's Bush, giving the name of Massari, but on
the following day he died.  He had for a long time been suffering from
an internal complaint and suddenly collapsed.  The effort of the rapid
journey from Rome and the anxiety were evidently too great for him."

"This is astounding!  We had no idea he was here!  There were orders
given for his arrest, you know," remarked the Embassy archivist, for
such I afterwards found him to be--a trusted official who for many years
has held that position, and is well-known and popular in the diplomatic
circle in London.  "But," he added suddenly, "how were you enabled to
establish his identity?"

"By these," I answered, drawing out a packet of official papers from my
pocket, opening them and handing him one of them to read.

The instant his eyes fell upon it he started, turned it over, and looked
up at me amazed.

"I presume you know Italian?" he asked quickly.

I nodded in the affirmative.

"Then you are aware what these papers are--most important Government
documents, abstracted from the archives of the Ministry of Justice in
Rome?"

"I know," I replied briefly.  "That is why I secured them, and why I
have brought them to His Excellency.  They certainly should not be
allowed to go into the hands of any one, for they contain much
confidential information regarding certain well-known persons."

"Of course," he said.  "His Excellency will, I'm sure, be extremely
indebted to you for acting with such discretion.  Had they fallen into
the hands of the London police they might have been copied, and the
secret of our methods known.  Besides, in any case, it surely would be
most detrimental to our prestige, if the public knew that confidential
reports of this character were being allowed to pass from hand to hand
for any one to read."

"I viewed the matter from exactly the same standpoint," I said.  "My own
opinion is that Nardini intended either to sell them, or to levy
blackmail by their means."

But the official only shrugged his shoulders in ignorance.  It was not
likely that he would condemn his own compatriot, even though at heart he
despised both the man and his dishonest methods.

Each paper he examined carefully, and once or twice gave vent to
ejaculations of surprise when he read facts concerning certain persons
in high positions in Rome which amazed him.

"At this moment His Excellency is unfortunately out, but I trust, Mr
Leaf, you will leave these with me," he suggested.  "We shall send them
back under seal to Rome."

"Of course, that was my intention," I said.  And then, in reply to some
further questions, I described to him the circumstances in which Nardini
had died.  Of course I made no mention of Lucie Miller nor of her
strange story of the dead man's mysterious hatred of myself.  I only
apologised that I had not thought of communicating with the Italian
Consulate, and expressed a hope that the restoration of these documents
might partly atone for my remissness.

"There is, I suppose, nothing else among the dead man's belongings to
interest us?" he asked seriously.  "You have, of course, made careful
search?"

"Yes.  I have had an inventory made by a solicitor.  There is nothing
else," I answered; and after giving my courteous friend my club address,
and chatting for some ten minutes longer, I received his renewed thanks,
and departed.

My one thought now was of Lucie Miller, the woman whose piteous appeal
to the fugitive had been in vain.  Several matters puzzled me and held
me mystified.

Sammy now seemed reluctant to discuss the matter any farther.
Light-hearted, easy-going and irresponsible, he declared that he wasn't
going to trouble his head about mysteries.  The Italian was dead and
buried, and there let him rest.  And as for Lucie, he had told me the
truth concerning her, and it ought to suffice me.

But it did not suffice me.

That desperate appeal she had written to the man who had held her future
in his hands showed me that she was in dire straits.  What could be the
allegation against her?

As day succeeded day and she did not return I became convinced that it
was not her intention to do so.  From the Embassy I received an official
letter of thanks signed by His Excellency himself, but it was evident
that they had not revealed the truth to the press, for the newspapers
were still full of hue-and-cry after the absconding ex-Minister.

I recollected that the desperate girl had told me that she had an aunt
"living in the country," but she had not told me in what locality, and
"the country" was a big place in which to search, more especially as I
did not know the lady's name.  She had told me also that she lived in
Leghorn where, being English, it would be easy to find her.  Yet somehow
I held a strong belief that she had not returned to Italy.

The police record gave Miller's place of birth as Studland, in
Dorsetshire, therefore I began to wonder whether, if I went there, I
should be able to discover any of the family.  Surely somebody would
know some facts concerning the family.  From the _Gazetteer_ I
discovered that the place was a small village on the sea, not far from
Swanage, and on the following morning, without saying anything to Sammy,
I took train from Waterloo.  At Swanage I hired a fly from that hotel
which faces the bay so pleasantly with grounds sloping to the water, and
an hour later I descended at the inn in Studland village.

It was a quiet, quaint old-world place, I found, with a queer ancient
little church hidden away among the trees at the back.  In the
bar-parlour of the "Lion" I ordered some tea, and then, in the course of
a chat with the stout, cheery old publican I casually inquired after
some friends of mine named Miller.

"Oh! yes," he said.  "Old Miss Miller lives 'ere still--at the Manor
'Ouse just beyond the village.  You passed it just before you came down
the hill from Swanage way.  They're one of the oldest families 'ere in
Studland.  One of the Millers--Sir Roger 'e was called--was governor of
Corfe Castle under Queen Elizabeth, so I've 'eard say."

"Then the Millers have always lived at the Manor?"  I remarked.

"Of course.  The property really belongs to Mr James, but 'e's always
abroad, so 'is sister, old Miss Catherine, lives in the 'ouse and looks
after it."

"Is this Mr Miller named James Harding Miller?"  I asked.

"Yes.  That's 'im.  They calls 'im the mysterious Mr Miller.  'E always
was a wild rascal when 'e wor a boy, they say.  The old gentleman could
do nothing with him, so 'e was sent abroad, and has lived there mostly
ever since."

"Has he any children?"

"A girl.  The servants at the Manor talk a lot about 'er, and say she's
very nice.  She's often 'ere."

"He's well off, I suppose?"

"Oh, dear no, sir," declared the innkeeper.  "The Millers are as poor as
church mice.  The value of land's gone down so of late years.  The old
place is mortgaged up to the hilt to some Jews in London, an' it's a
pity--a thousand pities."

All this, together with other facts and gossip which the garrulous old
fellow revealed to me, was of extreme interest, and I congratulated
myself upon the success of my first investigation.

"When did you last see that mysterious Mr Miller, as you call him?"

"Oh!  It's a long time now 'e 'aven't been in Studland.  Once, about
three years ago, 'e came without any luggage they say--and stayed over a
twelvemonth.  'E's a queer man.  'E never speaks to the likes of us."

I resolved to act boldly and call upon old Miss Miller and inquire after
her niece.  Therefore I went out and up the hill in the bright sunshine
until I came to the old and rather tumble-down lodge gate, and then,
after walking a short distance up the drive, I came within sight of a
large old Elizabethan mansion, long and rambling and time-mellowed--a
typical English home surrounded by great trees in the centre of a small
park.

A neat maid answered my summons, and I was at once ushered into a quaint
old oak-panelled room off the hall, the furniture of which was
undoubtedly Elizabethan, with rich old brocades dropping to pieces with
age.  I examined everything with interest, and then walked to the deep
diamond-paned window and was looking across the park admiring the
delightful vista when, of a sudden, I heard a movement behind me, and
turning, confronted a tall, thin, dark-haired man, slightly grey, with
bony features, a pair of sharp, closely-set eyes and scraggy brown
beard.  He was dressed in dark grey tweeds, and wore white spats over
his boots.

"Mr Leaf?" he inquired, glancing at the card I had sent in.  "I am Miss
Miller's brother," he explained.  "My name is James Harding Miller.  Do
you wish to see my sister very urgently?  She has a headache, and has
sent me to make her apologies."

I started when he introduced himself.

I was actually face to face with the ingenious scoundrel whom Sammy had
denounced, and whom the Italian police so strongly suspected to be the
leader of one of the cleverest gangs of malefactors in Europe.

CHAPTER NINE.

CONTAINS A SURPRISE.

James Harding Miller was a thoroughgoing cosmopolitan of most
gentlemanly exterior.  His grey face was deeply lined and bore that
curious washed-out look of a man who had lived many years in a hot
climate.  After ten years or so the fiery Italian sun no longer tans the
face of the northerner, but on the contrary his hair goes prematurely
grey, and each year as the burning summer comes he is less able to
withstand the heat of the "lion" days.  His leanness, his foreign-cut
clothes, and the slight gesticulation as he spoke all showed him to be a
man more at home in the bright Italian land of song and sunlight than
there, in an English village, the proprietor of that charming old home
of his honourable ancestors.

In reply to his question I was rather evasive, saying that I happened to
be in Swanage, and had driven out to pay a complimentary call upon his
sister.  She was not to put herself out of the way in the least, I
urged.  I should remain in Swanage for some days and hoped to have the
pleasure of calling again.

Then turning and glancing around, I exclaimed:--"What a delightful old
room!  To me it is a real pleasure to enter a thoroughly English home,
as this is."

"Why?" he inquired, eyeing me with some surprise.  "Because I live
almost always on the Continent, and after a time foreign life and
foreign ways jar upon the Englishman.  At least I've found it so."

"Ah!"  He sighed, rather heavily I thought.  "And I, too, have found it
so.  I quite agree with you.  One may travel the world over, as I have
done these past twenty years, yet there's no place like our much-abused
old England, after all."

"Oh, then you've been a rolling stone, like myself," I remarked,
delighted at the success of my ruse.

"Yes.  And I still am," was his answer, given rather sadly.  "Ever since
my poor wife's death, now nearly twenty years ago, I've been a wanderer.
This place is mine, but I'm scarcely ever here.  Why?  I can't for the
life of me tell you.  I've tried to settle down, but cannot.  After a
week here in this quiet rural dulness, the old fever sets up in my
blood, a longing for action, a longing to go south to Italy--the country
which seems to hold me in a kind of magnetism which I have never been
able to resist."

"And I, too, love Italy," I said.  "Is it not strange that most of us
who have lived any length of time in that country of blossoming
magnolias and gentle vines always desire to return to it.  We may abuse
its defects, we may revile its people as dishonest idlers, we may
execrate its snail-like railways and run down its primitive hotels, yet
all the same we have a secret longing to return to that glowing land
where life is love, where art is in the very atmosphere, where the sun
brings gladness to the heaviest heart, and the night silence is broken
by love _stornelli_ and the mandoline."

"You are right," he said, gazing straight out of the old leaded window
and speaking almost as though to himself.  "Byron found it so, Shelley,
Smollet, Trollope, the Brownings and hosts of others.  They were
fascinated by the fatal beauty of Italy--just as a man is so often drawn
to his doom by the face of a beautiful woman.  And after all we are but
straws on the winds of the hour."

Then, turning to a cabinet, I bent and admired a fine old Lowestoft
tea-set and a collection of old blue posset-pots, whereupon he said:--

"Ah!  I see you are interested in antiques.  Do you care for pictures?
I have one or two."

"I do.  I should delight to see them," I answered with enthusiasm;
therefore he led me across the low old-fashioned hall with its great oak
beams and open fireplace into a long gallery where the floor was
polished, and along one side was hung a choice collection of masters of
the Bolognese, Tuscan and Venetian schools.

At a glance I saw that they were of considerable value, and as I walked
along slowly examining them I half feared lest I might come face to face
with the daughter of the house.

Mine was a bold adventure, and surely it was fortunate for me that old
Miss Catherine had a headache.

Through room after room he conducted me with all the pride of a
collector showing his treasures.  Indeed, I was amazed to find such a
perfect museum of Italian art hidden away in that picturesque old Manor
House.  "Yes," he said presently, as we entered the long old-fashioned
drawing-room upholstered in antique rose-pattern chintz, "I've collected
in Italy for a good many years.  One can pick up bargains, even now, in
the less frequented towns, say Ravenna, Verona, Bologna or Rimini; while
in Leghorn there are still lots of genuine Sheraton and Chippendale
which was imported from England by the English merchants of that time.
I once made a splendid find of seventeenth-century English silver--two
porringers and some spoons--in the Ghetto in Leghorn."

I was at the moment looking at a circular Madonna on panel, evidently of
the Bolognese school of the cinquecento, hanging at the end of the long
pleasant old room when, in glancing round, my eye fell upon two small
tables where stood photographs in frames.

In an instant I bent over one and recognised it as that of the girl who
had come to me so mysteriously at Shepherd's Bush.

"That is my daughter," he remarked.

"Curious," I said, feigning to reflect.  "I think I've met her somewhere
abroad.  Perhaps it was in Italy.  Could it have been in Leghorn?"

"You know Leghorn?"

"I've been there many times.  I know the Camerons, the Davises, the
Matthews, and most of the English colony there."

"Then you may possibly have met her there," he said.  "We have a small
flat on the sea-front, and my daughter often plays tennis."

"Of course!"  I exclaimed, as though the mention of tennis brought back
to me full recollection of the incident.  "It was at tennis that I saw
her--last season when I was at the Palace Hotel.  I remember now, quite
well.  Our Mediterranean fleet were lying there at the time, and there
were lots of festivities, as there are every summer.  Is your daughter
now in England?"

"Oh, yes.  She's up in London, but returns to-morrow."

"And are you going back to Italy soon?"  I inquired.

"I hardly know.  My movements are never very certain.  I'm quite a
creature of circumstances, and nowadays drift about with the wind of
chance," he laughed.

"But this is a lovely old place," I remarked.  "If I had it I should
certainly not prefer a flat in a sun-baked Italian town, like Leghorn."

"Circumstances," he remarked simply, with a mysterious smile upon his
grey face.

What, I wondered, was his meaning?

Did he really intend to convey that the circumstances of his
dishonourable profession compelled him to hide himself in a small flat
in that somewhat obscure town--obscure as far as English life went?

When he learnt that I knew some of his friends in Leghorn he became
enthusiastic, and began to discuss the town and its notabilities.  What
did I think of the English parson?  And whether I did not think that
seeing the small English congregation the church ought not to be removed
to some town with a larger English colony.  It was absurd to keep a
parson there for half a dozen people.

And while my sharp eyes were busy examining the photographs set among
vases of fresh-cut flowers, I made replies and sometimes laughed at his
witty criticisms of persons known to both of us in "the Brighton of
Italy."

"What a contrast is the quiet rural life here, with all its old-world
English tranquillity, to that of the gay, garish, sun-blanched
_passeggiata_ of Leghorn, with its bright-eyed women, its oleanders, its
noise, movement, the glare and strident music of the _cafe-chantants_,
and the brightness of the newly discovered spa," I said.

He sighed, pursing his lips.

"Yes, Mr Leaf, you are quite right," he answered.  "I love Italy, but I
confess I very often long to be back here at Studland, in my own quiet
old home.  Lucie is always begging me to forsake the Continent and
return.  But it is impossible--utterly impossible."

"Why impossible?"  I asked, looking into his deeply furrowed face.

"Well--there is a reason," was his response.  "A strong reason, one of
health, which induces--nay, compels me to live abroad.  And I greatly
prefer Italy to any other country."

Little did he dream that I had that secret document of the Italian
Detective Department in my possession, or that I had learnt the truth
from my friend Sampson, the friend of the young Chilian Carrera.

We were chatting on, having halted at the open window which looked
across the old-fashioned garden with its rose arbours, moss-grown
terrace and grey weather-beaten sundial, away to the park beyond, when I
suddenly crossed to another table, whereon were other photographs.

One of them I thought I recognised even in the distance.

Yes!  I was not mistaken!  I took it in my trembling hand with a word of
apology, and looked into the picture intently.  Sight of it staggered
me.

"Who is this?"  I asked hoarsely, and my host must, I think, have
noticed the great change in my countenance.

"A friend of my daughter's, I think.  Do you know her?"

"I knew her," I replied in a hard, low tone, for sight of that smiling
face brought back to me all the bitter remembrance of a part that I
would have fain forgotten.  "It is Ella Murray!"

"Ah!--yes, that's her name.  I recollect now," he said; and I saw by his
face that he was interested.  "I think they were at school together."

Again I looked upon the portrait of my dear dead love, my eyes
fascinated, for I beheld there, at her throat, the small brooch I had
given her on her birthday, a green enamelled heart with two hearts in
diamonds entwined upon it.

Those sweet, wide-open eyes, clear blue and wondering like a child's,
gazed out upon me; her well-formed lips were slightly parted, as though
she were speaking again, uttering those soft words that had so charmed
me when she was mine, and mine only.  I recollected the dress, too, one
she had worn one night at dinner at the big country-house where we had
been fellow-guests.  Every feature of that lovely face was indelibly
photographed upon my memory.  Through those dark years, after that
paroxysm of grief that had overtaken me when I discovered her false, I
had, sleeping and waking, seen that smiling countenance as before my
vision.  Even in death Ella was still mine.

That smile!  Ah! did it not mock me?  Had not Avarice and Death cheated
me out of Happiness?  A great darkness was over my mind, like the plague
of an unending night.

I set my teeth, swallowed the lump that arose in my throat, and with a
sigh replaced the photograph upon the table.

"A pretty face," remarked the man whose police record was in my
possession.

"Yes, very," I remarked casually.

Ah! what a storm of bitter recollections surged through my burning
brain.

Had she but lived and loved how different would my own wasted, aimless
life have been!

Yes.  She was, after all, my dear dead love--my Ella!

CHAPTER TEN.

MY OWN CONFESSION.

The "Lion" Inn was a pleasant, old-fashioned little hostelry overlooking
the bay, with Bournemouth beyond the distant haze.  My room was small
and clean, with white dimity curtains and hangings, and framed religious
texts upon the walls.  As I sat at the window in the hour before my
dinner was ready, I reflected upon the strange incidents of those past
few days--a chain of curious circumstances that seemed to enmesh and to
entangle me.

Lucie Miller--the girl whose peril was such a mysterious and yet deadly
one--had actually known my Ella.  That very fact seemed somehow as a
further link between us.  What, I wondered, did she know of those later
days of my dead love's life?  To me they were shrouded in mystery.

That cold winter's night in damp, dismal London, when I had met her in
secret at the corner of Queen's Gardens, would ever remain in my memory.
She was staying with an aunt in Porchester Terrace, and we had always
preserved the secret of our affection.  She came dressed in black,
wearing a thick veil and carrying a muff in which was a bunch of
violets.  Her voice, when I greeted her, was, alas! not the same.  Quick
to recognise that something had occurred, I inquired the reason.  Had
she had any difference with her father or her aunt--as she sometimes
had?  No, she said, shaking her head, it was not that.

And then, almost in silence, we strolled on side by side over those wet
shining London pavements through the quieter streets and squares of
Bayswater, while I glanced wonderingly at her face showing pale behind
her spotted veil.  At last her trembling hand suddenly rested upon my
wrist, and halting she turned to me.  In hoarse tones quite unusual to
her she blurted forth the truth--the bitter truth that froze my heart.
I remember even the spot where we stood, beside a red letter-box at the
corner of Chepstow Place.  There the greatest blow of all my life fell
upon me; and we parted.

I went straight along the Westbourne Grove, blinded by tears.  She was
to wed the very last man she ought to have chosen.  The coarse,
fat-necked parvenu had bought her from her father with his gold won in
gambles on the Stock Exchange.  Yes, my Ella, my sweet-faced love, was
not satisfied with the prospect of being the wife of a man comfortably
off.  Like so many other girls who are dazzled by the lights of life,
she longed to shine as a hostess, to wear Paquin frocks and have her
portraits in the papers.  I was deeply disappointed with her, for, fool
that I was, I really believed that she honestly loved me.  How often,
alas! is a man deceived!  I was but one of thousands, after all.  And
yet I had adored her with all my heart and all my soul.

Away in the country the very song of the birds seemed to be in praise of
her--she whose beauty was sweet and delicate as the petals of the
flowers; chaste and sweet as the rose itself.  Love to the looker-on may
be blind, unwise, unworthily bestowed, a waste, a sacrifice, a crime;
yet none the less is love the only thing that, come weal or woe, is
worth the loss of every other thing; the one supreme and perfect gift of
earth in which all common things of daily life become transfigured and
divine.

I was crushed, benumbed, broken.  At first my brain refused to accept
her declaration that that meeting was to be our last, until she told me
the truth in all its hideous detail, and that on the morrow her
engagement was to be announced in the _Morning Post_.  I opened my lips
to upbraid her, but my tongue refused to utter a syllable of reproach.
I only bit my lips in silence.  Ah! yes, I loved her!--I loved her!

From that moment we never again met.  Next day I saw the announcement in
the papers, and, disappointed and heart-broken, I went abroad, and it
was a year after when one of my intimate friends, Jack Davies, a
lieutenant on board the _Cornwall_, in a letter which I received at a
lonely post-house on the snow-bound road in the extreme north of Russia,
wrote those words which caused my heart to burst within me:--

"You recollect little Ella Murray, who was, with her stepmother, up at
the Grainger's shoot two years ago?  The poor little girl was engaged to
some City fellow, an entire outsider, I heard, but I hear she caught
typhoid at a hotel in Sheringham and died six months ago.  A pity, isn't
it?  I rather liked her--so did you, I remember."

I stood at the door of that filthy, log-built place with the letter in
my hand, gazing across the great snow-covered plain with its long row of
telegraph-wires and verst-posts stretching away from Pokrovskoi to the
grey horizon.  My big bearded driver whispered to the post-house keeper,
for both saw that I had received bad news.  The man in sheepskins who
kept the place went in without a word and returned with a glass of
vodka.  I recognised his kindly thought, gulped down the spirit, and
mounting into the sledge drove on--on, whither I did not care.  Ella--my
own dear Ella was dead!

All this came back vividly to me on that evening as I ate my dinner
alone in the little inn at Studland, and then in the golden sunset
strolled by the sea--that same wide, mysterious sea beside which I had
so long ago declared my love.  She lived then, smiling, sighing, loving.
But now, alas! she was no more.  Of her memory there only remained that
shadowy picture that I had seen in Miller's drawing-room, the portrait
of the dead that smiled upon me in such mocking happiness.

I threw myself upon a bank and watched the glorious crimson and purple
of the summer afterglow.  Yes, the face of the world was for me now
changed.  The past had been full enough of bitterness, what, I wondered,
did the future contain?  Ah! if I could have but known at that moment!
Yet perhaps after all the Divine power is merciful in keeping from us
the happiness and tragedy that lie before.

Till the summer twilight darkened into night I sat therefore before the
sea, smoking and thinking.  The dark vista of silent waters before me
harmonised with my thoughts.  Mine was, alas! a wasted, useless life, I
had never known one moment's financial worry, and yet I had somehow
never found happiness.  In my life where I might be, at home or abroad,
there was always something wanting--the love of a good woman.

Through the following day I idled, mostly in the Lion, for it was too
hot for walking.  But at half-past two I sauntered to the station and,
unseen by Lucie, I saw her alight from the train from London, climb into
the smart dogcart that was awaiting her, and drive away in the direction
of the Manor.

Then when I returned and had my tea I remarked casually to the stout,
round-faced innkeeper:--

"I hear that Mr Miller is at the Manor House just now.  I learnt so
yesterday."

"An' so did I," was his reply.  "Dear me! wonders 'ull never cease.
Fancy Mr Miller coming back again!  An' they say that Miss Lucie's
a-comin', too."

"Is she his daughter?"  I inquired, as though in ignorance.

"Of course she is; an' a very good girl, too.  When she's 'ere--which
ain't very often, more's the pity--she does a great deal of good in the
village--visits the old people, looks after the coal club, and gives
away quite a lot of money to the deserving people who are destitute.  I
only wish there were more like 'er in these 'ere parts."

"Does she often come here?"

"Oh! two or three times a year," answered the landlord.  "Some say she
lives up in London with 'er aunt, and others declare that she's mostly
abroad with 'er father.  I believe the latter story.  She 'as a foreign
way about 'er, and I've 'eard the servants say as 'ow all 'er things are
made abroad."

"Then nobody knows her address?"  I said.

"Seems not.  But she's very fond of 'er father, and no doubt is always
with him."

"Do they have many friends at the Manor when Mr Miller and his daughter
are at home?"

"Not many.  Dr Haviland often dines with 'em."

"I don't mean local friends--visitors from London."

"Very few.  I've known one or two, but they've all been forriners.  Mr
Miller seems to like them forriners some'ow.  But I don't," declared the
old fellow.  "They're too infernal polite and sleeky for me.  I wouldn't
trust any of 'em for a pint o' beer."

"They were gentlemen, I suppose?"

"Oh, dear, yes--full of fine graces and fine manners.  They wore shoes
like women, and shirts pleated like women's blouses--great swells, I can
assure you."

"You never heard of any of their names?"

"No, how was I to 'ear?  Once two of 'em came in one hot day and
jabbered, sayin' `_boch! boch_!' an' grinnin' all over their faces.  It
was quite a long time before I discovered that they wanted two
half-pints o' bitter.  I suppose _boch_ is what they calls it in
French."

"Yes," I laughed.  "You're quite right."

The strangers had evidently been French, I reflected.  Had they been
Italian they would have asked for _birra_.

Regarding Lucie, I learnt that on several occasions, while she had been
at home, a young, black-moustached foreigner had been guest at the
Manor, and that she frequently drove him out in the dogcart.  My host
did not know the visitor's name.  He described him, however, as tall and
thin with a narrow hatchet face, black eyes and moustaches that turned
up at the ends.

"They passed up and down the village once or twice on their way to the
post-office, and I 'eard 'em talking in some gibberish," added the old
fellow, as he raised his tankard to his lips.  Like all his race in the
rural districts, he had no love for the foreigner, be he whatever he
might.  In his estimation every person from beyond the Channel was "a
froggie."

That evening I went for my usual lonely stroll by the sea, while all
next day I spent in watchful vigil in the vicinity of the Manor.  Though
for hours I idled concealed in the park, within view of the stately old
home of the Millers, my patience was unrewarded.  No sign of Lucie did I
see, either at any of the windows or in the old rose-garden.

Next evening, however, having learnt from the landlord that she was much
interested in a decrepit old woman who had been her nurse, and who lived
in a cottage at the farther end of Studland, I idled in wait for her in
a narrow green lane which ran at the back of the church, and was at
length rewarded by seeing her approaching.  She was dressed in white
muslin with a large lace garden hat, and beside her walked her pet dog,
a beautiful fawn collie.

Boldly I went towards her, my hat in my hand in respectful greeting.

In an instant she recognised me, and drew back, half in surprise, half
in alarm.

Her countenance went white as death.

"You--Why--Mr Leaf!" she gasped, attempting to smile.  "Only fancy--to
meet you here!"

"Miss Miller," I said calmly, taking the hand she offered me, and
glancing around in order to see that we were not observed, "I came here
on purpose to meet you--to speak with you!"

"With me?" she cried in cold surprise, her brows contracting in marked
displeasure.  "What have you to say?  Explain quickly, for we must not
be seen together here."  And I recognised from her trembling lips how
anxious and agitated she had become.  She was in some great fear.  I was
convinced of that.

She tried to smile me welcome, but it died from her white lips.  The
expression upon her face told me that she was in deadly fear lest I
should discover her secret.

I was, I felt certain, the very last person whom she desired to meet.

The very fact of my presence there told her that I knew something
concerning her--something concerning the past that she intended at all
costs to hide from me.

CHAPTER ELEVEN.

LUCIE IS CONFIDENTIAL.

"This is not altogether an accidental meeting, Miss Miller," I confessed
at once to her.  "The fact is I have waited in vain for your return to
Granville Gardens, and at length have thought it wise to come here in
search of you."

"Who told you that we lived here?" she inquired breathlessly.

"No one told me, I discovered the fact quite accidentally," was my
answer.  "Remember that your family is an old one, and in Debrett,
therefore it was easy to find out the home of the Dorsetshire Millers."
My rather plausible explanation apparently satisfied her, for looking
sharply around, she said:--

"If we are to talk, Mr Leaf, let us cross yonder stile and slip across
the fields.  We shall not be seen there."  So I helped her over the
stile she indicated and we passed together along a steep path beside a
high hawthorn hedge, and a few minutes later descended into the hollow
where the village and sea were lost to view.

"I certainly expected you to return," I said, half reproachfully.  "I
believed that you would wish to hear something further regarding the
dead man.  You refused to tell me his name, but I have discovered it.
He was Nardini, the absconding ex-Minister of Justice in Rome."

"Who told you so?" she inquired, looking at me with considerable
suspicion.

"I took possession of his papers.  They explained everything," I replied
simply.  "And now," I added, "the reason I am here is to inquire if I
can assist you in any way, and to repeat my readiness to do so."

"No," she answered, shaking her head sadly.  "No assistance that you
could render me, Mr Leaf, would, I regret to say, be of any avail," and
I saw tears welling in her eyes.

"But you must not give up like this," I urged.  "You must endeavour to
shield yourself, even if you fail, after all.  The man is dead; his
mouth is closed."

"Ah, yes.  That is just it.  If he lived he might, perhaps, have had
compassion upon me."

"He refused to tell the truth--that you were at his villa at Tivoli on
that evening, and therefore could not have been in Rome, eh?"

She halted, glaring at me open-mouthed.  She saw that I knew the truth,
and after a few moments' silence with her eyes fixed upon mine, she
exclaimed in a low, hoarse voice:--

"He preserved silence because he dared not tell the truth.  He was a cur
and a coward."

"And also a thief, it would seem," I added.

"Yes--you have seen what the papers are saying about him, I suppose?
The police are searching for him all over Europe.  They have no idea
that he is already dead and buried."

"Perhaps it is as well; otherwise the papers would have fallen into
their hands.  As it is I took possession of them all and restored them
to the Italian Embassy--all but this," and I drew out her letter of
appeal, and, opening it, handed it to her.

She glanced at it, crushed it in her hand with a sigh, her dark eyes
still fixed upon mine, as though she were trying to read my innermost
thoughts.

"Who are your enemies?"  I asked in a kindly tone of sympathy.  "Tell
me, Miss Miller, what have they alleged against you?"

Her brows again contracted.  She set her lips hard but remained silent,
determined not to satisfy me regarding the charge against her.

I pressed her to speak, but she was firm and quite immovable.

"Now that Nardini is dead I am helpless in the hands of my unscrupulous
enemies," was her low, inert answer.

"That letter is best destroyed," I said.  Then with murmured thanks she
tore it into tiny fragments and scattered it to the wind which carried
the pieces away across the wide field of ripe corn.

I told her nothing of the yellow document, that hideous record which
Nardini had preserved with her letter.

On the contrary, I implored her pardon for my visit and for my piece of
audacious imposture, and, as we walked on together, explained how her
father and myself had become friends.

At first she seemed full of fear and suspicion, but gradually, as I gave
a full description of how Miller had taken me over the house to see the
pictures and antiques, and she saw how enthusiastic I was over the
beautiful old place, she became reassured.  Did she know the secret of
her father's double life?  In any case I could see that she was prepared
to go to any length in order to shield him.

"I expect my aunt has been very much puzzled by your card," she said.
"She will probably be wondering whoever you can be."

"If you so desire, Miss Miller, you can explain to your aunt that I am a
friend of yours, and that by a mistake of the servant the card was sent
to her."

"A most excellent excuse," she laughed.  "I'll tell her so, and then if
you are still remaining here over to-morrow, perhaps you will call."

"I shall be only too delighted," I assured her.  "Your father I found a
most charming man--almost as charming as his daughter."

"Now no compliments please, Mr Leaf," she exclaimed, flushing slightly.

"It is not an idle one, I assure you," I said.  "The compliment is
equally to your father as to yourself."  And then we strolled forward
again along the banks of a small rippling brook overhung by willows and
hawthorns.  Was it possible that she, so full of grace and sweetness,
was actually the woman who Sammy had declared her to be?  No, I could
not bring myself to believe it.  She spoke with such feeling and
sympathy, and she was so full of an ineffable charm that I refused to
believe that she was a mere adventuress assisting her father in his
direction of some ingenious gang of thieves who worked in secret.

Her father, too, was the very last man whom I should have believed to be
an adventurer had not the proof been so plain.  Was not that appeal of
Lucie's to Nardini an ugly and suspicious truth?

The more suspicious, too, that she would give me no idea of the
allegation against her.  She evidently feared lest I should make inquiry
and discover the disgraceful truth.

Presently, as we came to a bend in the stream where the water was
deeper, its unruffled surface shining like a mirror, I halted, and
looking straight into her face, said:--

"Miss Miller, yesterday at your house I made a discovery--one that
utterly astounded me."

Her countenance went ashen grey.

"A discovery!" she faltered.  "What--what do you mean?"

Instantly I saw that I had quite unintentionally alarmed her and
hastened to set her at her ease.

"I saw upon a table in your drawing-room the photograph of a very dear
friend--Ella Murray.  She was your friend, so your father told me.  How
curious that we should both have been acquainted with her!"

"Oh!  Ella!  Did you really know poor Ella?" she exclaimed quickly,
reassured that my discovery was not of a compromising character.

"I knew her very well indeed," was my slow response.  "When were you
acquainted with her?"

"Oh! years ago.  We were together at the Sacre Coeur at Evreux, and both
left the convent the same year.  She was my most intimate friend, and
once or twice came with me here, to Studland, when we had our holidays
together."

"She actually visited here!"  I exclaimed in surprise.

"Several times.  Mr Murray was my father's friend.  As you know, he
lived at Wichenford, in Worcestershire.  Then we went to reside entirely
abroad, and for quite a long time, a year or more, I lost sight of her.
She was very beautiful.  From a child her wonderful face was everywhere
admired.  In the convent we girls nicknamed her `The Little Madonna,'
for she bore a striking likeness to the Van Dyck's Madonna in the Pitti
in Florence, a copy of which hung in the convent chapel."

"Ah, of course!"  I cried.  Now that she recalled that picture, I
recognised the extraordinary likeness.  Perhaps you, who read this
chronicle of strange facts, know that small canvas a foot square which
hangs in a corner of one of the great gold-ceilinged salons, almost
unnoticed save by the foreign art enthusiast.  The expression of
sweetness and adoration distinguishes it as a marvellous work.  "What do
you know further concerning her?"  I asked.  "Tell me all--for she was
my friend."

"About a year before we went to live at Enghien, near Paris, Mrs Murray
died.  Then her father let Wichenford Place to an American, and went to
Australia for a sea-trip, leaving Ella in charge of an old aunt who
lived in London.  I saw her once, at her aunt's house in Porchester
Terrace.  She was very unhappy, and when I asked her the reason she told
me in bitter tears that she loved a man who adored her in return.  She
would not tell me the man's name, but only said that her father and her
aunt were compelling her to marry a wealthy elderly man who was odious,
and whom she hated.  Poor little Ella!  I pitied her, and tried to
comfort her, but it was quite useless, for that very evening her father,
who was then back in London, compelled her to go out and meet her secret
lover and give him his _conge_.  Who he was or what became of him I do
not know.  I only know that she loved him as dearly as any woman has
ever loved a man--poor little Ella!"

I stood before her motionless, listening to those words.  Was this true?
Had Fate any further shaft of bitterness to thrust into my already
broken heart?

"Miss Miller!"  I managed to exclaim, in a very low voice I fear, "what
you tell me is utterly astounding.  You know the man who loved Ella
Murray.  He was none other than myself--I who loved her, ay better than
my own life--I who received that dismissal from the sweet lips that I so
adored--the lips that I now know were compelled to lie to me."

"You--Mr Leaf!" she cried.  "Impossible.  You were actually Ella's
secret lover!"

"Ah, yes!  God alone knows how I have suffered all these years," I said,
half-choked.  "You were her friend, Miss Miller, therefore you will
forgive me if even to-day I wear my heart upon my sleeve.  You will say,
perhaps, that I am foolish, yet when a man loves a woman honestly, as I
did, and he craves for affection and happiness, the catastrophe of
parting is a very severe one--often more so to the man than to the
woman.  But," I added quickly, "pardon me, I am talking to you as though
you were as old as myself.  You, at your age, have never experienced the
bitterness of a blighted love."

"Unfortunately I have," she answered, in a low, trembling voice.  "I,
too, loved once--and only once.  But, alas! after a few short weeks of
affection, of a bliss that I thought would last always, the man I loved
was cruelly snatched from me for ever."  And she sighed and tears welled
in her fine eyes, as she looked aimlessly straight before her--her mind
filled with painful recollections.

She told me no more, and left me wondering at the secret love romance
that, to my great surprise, seemed to have already hardened her young
heart.

Every girl, even in her school years, has her own little affair of the
heart, generally becoming hopelessly infatuated with some man much her
senior, who is in ignorance of the burning he is awakening within the
girlish breast.  But hers was, I distinguished, a real serious
affection, one which, like my own, had ended in black grief and tragedy.

But she had told me one truth--a ghastly truth.  I had misjudged my dear
dead love!  She had still loved me--she had still been mine--in heart my
own!

CHAPTER TWELVE.

IN WHICH A STRANGE THING HAPPENS.

"If your love has ended in tragedy, as mine has done, then we can surely
sympathise with each other, Miss Miller," I said, looking into her
tearful eyes.  "You know well how I have suffered.  I believed that Ella
really preferred that man to myself, and what you have now told me
amazes me.  I believed that she was false to me--and yet you tell me
that she was true.  Ah! how dearly I loved her!  I do not believe that
any man ever loved a woman so fondly, and with such fierce passion as I
did.  I was hers--body and soul.  My love for her was that deep,
all-consuming affection which sometimes makes a man as wax in a woman's
hands--to be moulded for good or for evil as she wills it.  I lost all
count of time, of friends, of everything, for I lived only for her.  The
hours when we were parted were to me like years, her words were music,
her smiles the sunlight of my life, her sighs the shadows, her kisses
the ecstatic bliss of terrestrial paradise in which I lived.  Ah! yes,
you who have loved and lost can well understand all that her love meant
to me--you can understand why one dark foggy night I stood upon Charing
Cross platform and swore an oath that never again would I put foot in
the country which, though my native land, held for me only a poignant
memory."

"Yes," she answered, with a slight sigh, "I quite understand how you
must have suffered.  Yet how strange it is that you should actually have
been Ella's lover--the man who she declared to me was the only one she
would ever love.  I did not know you, of course, yet I sympathised with
you when she told me that she was going that evening to meet you, and to
lie to you under compulsion."

"But why--why did she consent to do this?"  I asked.

"She confessed to me the reason.  She spoke in confidence, but now that
it is all past, I may surely tell you.  The fact was that her father,
owing to the great depreciation in the value of land, had got into the
hands of the Jews, and was on the verge of bankruptcy.  Blumenthal, who
had lent him a large sum upon mortgage, had offered to return the deeds
on the day that he married Ella."

"Then she actually sacrificed herself to save her father!"  I cried.

"Without a doubt.  And what a sacrifice!  She loved you, Mr Leaf, and
yet she dismissed you in order to save her father from ruin."

"Blumenthal was a brute to have ever suggested such a condition," I
declared savagely.  "I never saw him.  What kind of man was he?  Did you
meet him?"

"Yes.  He was at Porchester Terrace on the afternoon when I called," she
replied.  "A short, stout, black-whiskered man, of a decidedly Hebrew
cast.  He was dressed loudly and wore a white waistcoat with heavy gold
albert--a typical City man such as one sees in Cornhill or Lothbury."

"She showed no sign of affection towards him?"

"None whatever.  He was introduced to me by Mr Murray as Ella's
affianced husband, and I was, of course, amazed that she should
entertain a spark of affection for him.  But half an hour later, when we
were alone, she confessed in tears everything to me, just as I have
related it to you."

"Well, you utterly astound me," was all I could exclaim.

What she had revealed to me placed my little Ella in an entirely new
light.  I never dreamed of her self-martyrdom.  I sighed heavily, and a
big lump arose in my throat as I reflected that, perhaps, after all
death was preferable to life with a man whom she could not love.

The calm twilight was deepening into night, and the silence was broken
only by the low murmuring of the water, the swift swish of some rat or
water-hen in the rushes startled at our presence, and the dismal cry of
a night-bird in the willows on the opposite bank.

"Did you hear nothing more of Ella after that day at Porchester
Terrace--that 12th of November that was, alas! fatal to my happiness?"

"She wrote to me twice.  One letter I received in Rome a month
afterwards, and the second followed me about some weeks, and at last
found me at Lindau, on the Lake of Constance.  Both letters were full of
her own unhappiness.  In the first she reproached herself bitterly for
having lied to the man she really loved--though she never mentioned your
name--and said that she was back at Wichenford, but for her the world
was dead.  The man whom she had dismissed had left her in disgust and
despair and had gone abroad, whither she knew not.  A friend of yours
had, it seemed, told her that you had gone to Algeria, and her letter
concluded with the words: `I am alone to blame for this, yet how could
I, in the circumstances, have acted otherwise?'"

"And the second letter?"  I asked eagerly.

"It was written a month later, from Blumenthal's shooting-box near Blair
Athol.  She and her father were guests there at the great house-party
consisting mostly of wealthy City men and their wives.  She described it
and said how she hated it all.  She had, she told me, tried to escape.
She had even thought of writing to you to tell you the truth and ask
your counsel, yet what use was it when she knew that she must save her
father from the ruin that threatened.  Wichenford Place had been the
home of the Murrays ever since the days of James the First, when the
King himself, granted it to his faithful partisan, Donald Murray of
Parton, in Dumfriesshire.  No Murray had ever before mortgaged it,
therefore it was clearly her duty to her family to redeem it from the
hands of usurers and vandals, even at cost of her own happiness."

"A noble sacrifice!"  I sighed.

"Yes, Mr Leaf.  She was a noble girl," declared my handsome companion.
"I, who knew her through ten years or so, knew her, perhaps, better than
even you yourself did.  The Little Madonna was never accused of an
unkind or unjust action."

"And after that letter?"

"A few months later she came to visit us at Enghien.  She and her father
were in Paris, where she was buying her trousseau.  But she made no
mention of Blumenthal.  Afterwards we were continually moving from place
to place, and if she wrote, her letter never reached me.  I heard no
more."

A long deep silence fell between us.  We were still standing there in
the grey twilight at a small gate that led into the next field, our path
still continuing beside the stream.

"Strange that it should be I who should tell you the truth," she
remarked, almost as though speaking to herself.  "You, a perfect
stranger, offered to do me a service--indeed you have done me a very
great service by restoring that letter to me--and in return, I have been
able to tell you the truth regarding your lost love," and she looked
into my face with her sad, serious eyes.

"Yes, it is indeed curious," I said.  "Our circumstances are, in a
measure, identical.  We have both been the victims of dire misfortunes,
both broken by the tragedy of an unhappy love.  But you have told me
hardly anything concerning yourself," I added.

The laces of her muslin blouse rose slowly and fell again.  In that dim
light I detected a hardness at the corners of her mouth, a hardness
that, to me, was all-sufficient proof of the bitterness wearing out her
young heart.

"Myself!" she echoed sadly.  "What need I say about myself?  It is of
the past, and the memory of it all is a very bitter one.  Like you, I
believed that happiness was to be mine, the more so, because my father
entirely approved of our union.  He made confidential inquiries
concerning him, and found that he was all that he represented himself to
be.  But love and happiness were not for me.  I, alas! am one of those
who are debarred the sweetness of life," she added hoarsely, her small
white hands clenching themselves, as thoughts of the past crowded upon
her.

For some time we were again silent.  I was anxious to know the truth of
the love romance of my sweet-faced little friend--the girl whom Sammy
had denounced as an adventuress.  Yet surely there was nothing of the
adventuress about her as she stood there in her plain white frock amid
that purely English scene.  I glanced at her countenance and saw that it
was pale and agitated, and that her nervous lips were trembling.  Her
chin had sunk upon her breast and she stood deep in thought as though
unconscious of my presence.

"Where did it occur?  Here?"

"No, abroad," she answered, in a thin, mechanical voice.  "I met him
when we were living at Enghien, and from the first moment of our meeting
we discovered that by some strange magnetism we were drawn irresistibly
together.  He was a foreigner, it is true, but his mother had been
English, and his father was a Chilian."

"Chilian!"  I cried, in a voice of surprise.  But she never guessed the
reason of my amazement.

"Yes.  My father discovered that we met in secret, and then invited him
to dine with us.  From that evening he came daily out from Paris, and we
used to spend each afternoon boating on the lake or playing tennis on
the island.  Before long we had pledged our love, and then commenced
days of bliss such as I had never before experienced.  I knew at last
what was meant by perfect happiness, for we adored each other.  I loved
him just as dearly as Ella loved you.  I would have died for him.  Yet
in all too short a time the blow fell upon me--the blow that has crushed
all life from me, that has already made me a world-weary woman before my
time."

"And what was the end?"  I asked with deep sympathy, yet, alas! knowing
too well the story of the tragedy.

"The end--ah?" she sighed.  "How can I tell you?  On the very night when
we had secretly fixed the date of our marriage--a night when my father
invited several friends to dine--he returned to Paris, and--" but she
broke off short and burst into a wild passion of tears.

For some time I waited, my hand placed tenderly upon her shoulder,
striving to comfort her, and urging her to bear up against her heavy
burden of trouble.  Then at last when she grew calm again, she said in a
hard tone:--

"On his return to Paris he found that during his absence thieves had
obtained access to his room at the hotel, and securities for a very
large amount, for the safe custody of which he was personally
responsible, had been stolen.  He saw that his own honour was at stake,
that he alone was to blame for not leaving them in the bank, and in a
fit of despondency--a mad paroxysm of temporary insanity--he took out
his revolver and ended his life.  I only knew of it four days after,
when I chanced to read of it in the _Independance Belge_, for early on
the morning following the dinner, my father had received a telegram and
been compelled to go to Brussels, and I accompanied him.  Before I knew
the awful truth, poor Manuel was already dead and buried!  Since that
day," she added bitterly, "all hope of happiness has been crushed within
me.  I know now that the love of an honest man is not for me."

I made no response.  I was too absorbed in my own thoughts.  Every word
of hers bore out Sammy's story, yet I saw that she herself was innocent
of the foul plot which had, as a sequel, the suicide of the poor girl's
lover.

Miller knew the truth; he was, indeed, in all probability the instigator
of the ingenious theft that had had such a tragic sequel.

In silence I held the small gate open for her, and together we passed on
along the path beside the winding stream.  Both our hearts were too full
for words after that unusual exchange of confidences.

Of a sudden before us, advancing in our direction, there appeared the
figure of some one in the shadow beneath the trees.

Lucie detected it at the same instant as myself, and halting drew back
in quick alarm.

"We must not be seen here together," she gasped.  "People would talk,
and it would quickly get to my father's ears."

"And what harm if it did?"  I asked, but ere she could reply a strange
thing happened--an incident more startling and more amazing than any I
could have ever imagined in my wildest dreams.

I held my breath, and stood rooted to the spot.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN.

BENEATH THE LOVE-LIGHT.

What followed was amazing, mystifying.

With a loud cry that startled me the grey figure had come swiftly
towards us, and I then saw that it was a woman.

My companion and she flew into each other's arms and exchanged wild
joyful greetings, while I, catching sight of her face, stood there
open-mouthed, breathless in sheer astonishment.

At that moment I doubted whether I were actually sane and in possession
of all my senses.  I doubted even my own eyes.  And had you been there,
in my place, I think you also would have been dumbfounded.

"Fancy you--of all persons in this whole world!"  Lucie cried, then
turning to me after kissing the newcomer with wild enthusiasm, she
laughed, adding:--

"This gentleman is not altogether a stranger, I believe?"

The woman turned her flushed countenance to mine, and in the dim
twilight our eyes met.

She started back with a loud cry, then, next instant, dashed forward to
me, grasping both my hands.

"Ella!"  I ejaculated.  It was all I could say.

"Godfrey!--you?"

And she looked from me to Lucie inquiringly, for having met us walking
at that hour by that lonely brook she doubtless believed us to be
lovers.

"I am Godfrey Leaf," I said, grasping both her hands.  "Yes, I cannot
realise that you are really Ella--my own Ella--from the grave?"  And I
still stood there stupefied.

"From the grave?  What do you mean?" she asked, surprised.

"They told me that you were dead," I cried quickly.  "They said that you
had caught typhoid, and that it ended fatally."

"It is true that I had a bad attack of fever, and the doctors gave me
up, yet somehow--I suppose by the perverseness of Fate, because I had no
further desire to live--I recovered.  But you were abroad constantly,
and therefore heard nothing of me."

"I was in Russia when I received news of your death, Ella," I said in a
low voice, for there, in the presence of my love, I had become a changed
man.  "I have mourned for you until to-day."

"I had no idea of this!" she exclaimed.  "I have been living in Ireland
with my father.  I have scarcely ever been in London since--since that
night when we parted," she faltered, lowering her eyes, as though
fearing to meet my reproachful gaze.

"And how came you here?"  Lucie asked, as amazed as I was at her
appearance.

"We came over from Bournemouth to Swanage this afternoon, and it
suddenly occurred to me to come and see if you were in England.  I
wanted to see the dear old Manor again--the house where you and I have
spent so many very happy hours long ago.  Minton did not recognise me at
first, but when he did he told me that you had gone out to the village
two hours ago.  I then made inquiries as to the direction you had taken,
and fortunately found you here."

"Then your father is now at Swanage?"

"Yes.  We are staying the night there.  To-night a motor-car belonging
to a friend of my father's is coming from Winchester to take us for a
trip through Devonshire and Cornwall."

"Well, Ella, you certainly gave us both a turn, appearing so suddenly,"
declared Lucie.  "Only half an hour ago we were speaking of you, and,
like every one else, believed that you were dead."

"I wonder who started such a report?" she said.  "Why did they say that
I had died?"

"To trace the source of a false report is always difficult," I said.
"Somebody surmises something and tells some one else, and the second
person, in recounting it, declares the surmise to be the truth.  It is
almost always so."

"There certainly could be no motive in saying that Ella was dead, as far
as I can see," Lucie declared.  "But," she added, "why let us worry
about the past?  You have come back to us--back really from the grave."

"Yes," I said, still holding her hand.  "I believed, Ella, that you were
dead long ago.  The memory of that last night when we walked through the
wet streets of Bayswater has ever remained a bitter one."

"No, no," she cried.  "Do not recall it.  I, too, have suffered agonies
of regret.  Why is it that we meet again--like this?" and I noted that
her splendid eyes were turned upon her friend in askance.

Yes.  She suspected that Lucie and I were lovers, and such a conclusion
was, after all, but natural.

"You are surprised, no doubt, to meet us together," laughed Lucie.  "But
if you knew the truth regarding our acquaintance you would be even more
surprised."

"Then Godfrey is not--"

"He is certainly not my lover," she exclaimed.  "I may as well make that
quite clear to you at once, dear.  We came here because he had something
to explain to me, and we naturally had no desire that the villagers
should gossip."

My Ella turned again to me, and I saw that all anxiety had faded from
her beautiful countenance.  She was sweet and smiling--her old
delightful self again.

What had happened in those years I knew not.  My love might be married,
for aught I knew.  She wore gloves, therefore I could not tell if her
hand bore a wedding ring.  She made no mention of Blumenthal, and I
could not well inquire of him.  So we were both of us somewhat
restrained, neither knowing of the exact position of the other.

I only knew that all the great passion I had entertained for her swelled
within my heart, filling it to overflowing.  The touch of her had
thrilled me and I longed to kiss those sweet red lips once again--to
repeat to her my love and to assure her that I was still unchanged.

But with Lucie present I could say nothing.  I could ask no question,
nor could I make any declaration.  Yet in those few moments I had been
lifted from the depths of despair and despondency to the pinnacle of
happiness.

Ella, my well-beloved, still lived!  And while she lived she was still
mine in heart, even though, perish the thought, she might be wife of
another.

Darkness was now falling, yet there was still sufficient light to reveal
her wondrous beauty.  As she stood before me in her pale grey dress and
large black hat I recognised that she had grown even more beautiful than
she had been in the days of our love romance.  Her figure was perfect in
its symmetry; her countenance so lovely that even the uncommon beauty of
Lucie paled before her.  Those blue eyes that I knew were so
unfathomable were turned upon me, and even there I saw in them the
love-light that was unmistakable, that expression mysterious and
indescribable that no woman is ever able to feign--the look, often
unconscious, that tells a man that he is the object of passionate
affection.

My heart leapt within me with wild ecstasy, yet I could not speak.

I only grasped her hand more tightly.  Then in order to cover the
emotion that I saw was rising within her, I turned and made a casual
remark to Lucie that it was almost time we returned.

"Of course," she said quickly, recognising the situation.  "You two have
much to talk over alone.  Let us go."

And together we moved forward along the path by, which my lost love had
returned to me.

How can I describe to you my feelings in those moments?  Sometimes I
found myself doubting whether it was not all some dream or some strange
chimera of my unbalanced brain.  But I held her hand, and found that it
was real flesh and blood.  My well-beloved still lived; she for whom I
had mourned so long had returned, even more sweet and beautiful.

The village bells were pealing, the ringers practising probably.

"Hark!"  I said, as I walked at her side, treading on air from sheer
buoyancy of spirits.  "They are joy bells, Ella.  They ring because you
have returned to me."  She laughed, turning those dear, wide-open eyes
to mine, and said:--

"How often have I wondered where you were, and whether--" and she paused
without completing the sentence.

"Whether what?"

"Well--whether you had, after all, forgotten me," she said.  "I never
dreamed that you believed me dead.  I thought, of course, that if you
really loved me, as you used to say, that you would surely write to me
or endeavour to see me when you knew that, after all, I had not married
that man."

"Then you did not marry Blumenthal after all!"  I cried quickly.  "Was
the engagement broken off?"

"Yes.  Because of his ill-health.  He released me when the doctors told
him the truth--that he had only a few months to live.  He died three
months later."  And she grew silent again, and yet it seemed as if she
wished to tell me something further.  Indeed she was about to do so, but
checked herself.

"Well!"  I asked, in order to allow her an opportunity to speak.

"He was generous to me after all," she went on.  "The day before he died
he sent for me, and I went and sat at his bedside.  He knew his end was
near, and after he had expressed deep regret that he had come between
us--for he knew quite well that I loved you very dearly--he drew from
beneath his pillow a large sealed envelope, making me promise to take it
home, but not to open it until the day after his decease.  Next day he
died, and on the day following I broke the seals and discovered, to my
amazement and joy, that he had presented me with the mortgage deeds of
Wichenford.  Some years before my father had mortgaged our old home to
him, and those very deeds he had made my price as his wife."

"Then for the great injustice he did you, Ella, the fellow endeavoured
to atone," I said.  "The mortgage, therefore, does not now exist."

"Of course not.  I gave the deeds at once to my father, and they were
that day destroyed, much to the chagrin of the heirs of the estate, who
had long been scheming to become possessors of Wichenford."

"A most generous action," Lucie declared.

"Yes, whatever I may have said of him, and however much I have hated him
in the past, I cannot help acknowledging that before his death he
rendered me the greatest service."

"Yet you were prepared to perform a noble self-sacrifice, Ella," I said,
in a low, serious voice.  "You kept your secret, and before we parted
told me what was untrue.  But Lucie has revealed to me the astounding
truth.  Only to-night, for the first time, have I realised all that your
self-martyrdom meant--only to-night have I discovered that, after all,
you still loved me just as fondly and with a passion just as fierce as
my own--that even though engaged to Blumenthal your dear heart was still
my own."

CHAPTER FOURTEEN.

CRUEL DESTINY.

James Harding Miller was seated alone in a long cane deck-chair on the
terrace that ran the whole length of the beautiful old house.  He had
drawn it out through the French windows of the smoking-room, and was
idly drawing out a cigar in the semi-darkness.

"Father!" cried Lucie, rushing forward as we approached, "do you
recognise our visitor?"

Instantly he jumped up, exclaiming:--

"Why Ella--Ella after all this time!  Minton told me that you had called
and had gone in search of Lucie.  And how is your father?"

"He's very well, thanks," was my love's reply.  "I left him at Swanage,
and drove out to see if Lucie was at home."

"And Mr Leaf," exclaimed Lucie.  "I think you have met him before,
father?"

"Certainly," Miller said pleasantly, extending his hand to me.  "You are
staying here, in Studland?"

"For a couple of days or so," I answered.

"You mentioned that you had met my daughter," he remarked, and then
after welcoming Ella and pressing her to remain there the night, he
ordered Minton to bring us chairs, and pushed the cigars across to me.

To Miller, Ella gave the same account of herself as she had given to us.
The identity of the person who had spread the false report concerning
her death--a report which had passed from mouth to mouth among all her
friends--was a mystery, and Miller was just as surprised and just as
pleased as ourselves at her reappearance.

As we sat there in the starlight I listened to Ella's account of her
free, open-air life in County Galway, for Wichenford was still let to
the wealthy American; and her father, she said, preferred Ireland as a
place of residence when he could not live on his own estate.

"But you never wrote to us," Miller remarked.  "Often we have spoken of
you, and regretted that you were no longer with us.  Indeed, your
portrait is still yonder in the drawing-room.  Only the day before
yesterday Mr Leaf noticed it, and inquired whether I knew you."

My love's eyes met mine in a long wistful look.

"I believed that you were always abroad," she answered him.  "And--well,
to tell the truth, I had an idea that you had altogether forgotten me."

"Forgotten you, dear?" cried Lucie.  "We have never forgotten you.  How
could I ever forget my dearest friend--and more especially when I knew
what a terrible self-sacrifice you had made?"

"What's that?" inquired Miller, quickly interested.

"Shall I tell him?" asked Lucie, turning to me.

"If you wish.  It is only right, I think, that Mr Miller should know
the truth."

Therefore, receiving Ella's consent as well, Lucie explained to her
father how I had been her friend's secret lover, and how she had broken
off our affection by force of circumstance, sacrificing herself in order
to save her father from ruin.

He listened to his daughter in surprise, then sighing heavily, turned to
Ella, saying sympathetically:--

"How noble of you!  Ah! what you both must have suffered!  You need not
tell me, either of you, for I know myself what it is to lose the woman
one loves.  I recollect my poor dear wife and still adore her memory."
And this from a man who was suspected of being leader of a gang of
international criminals!

"The bitterness of the past," I said, "will perhaps render the joy of
the present all the sweeter."

"It certainly ought to.  Surely your delight at finding Ella alive and
well when you, like all of us, believed her dead, must be beyond
bounds?"

"It is!  It is!"  I cried.  "I, who believed that she preferred wealth
to my honest love; I, who have these long years been filled with a
thousand regrets and reproaches, now know the truth.  I have misjudged
her!"

The soft hand of my well-beloved sought my wrist and gripped it.  That
action conveyed more to me than any words of hers could have done.

Presently it grew chilly, and we went into the long old-fashioned
drawing-room, where we found Miss Miller, a pleasant grey-faced old
lady, in a cap with cherry-coloured ribbons, idling over a book.

Upon the table still stood the portrait of my dear heart, the picture
which only two days before had awakened within me such bitter
remembrances.  The silk-shaded lamps shed a soft light over everything,
illuminating for the first time my Ella's beautiful face.  In the
twilight by the river I had seen that she had become even more
beautiful, yet the light that now fell upon her revealed a calmness and
sweetness of expression that I had not hitherto been able to
distinguish.  She was far more lovely than I had believed--more
beautiful even than in those days of our secret love.

Those great blue eyes looked out upon me with that same love-flame as of
old--eyes that were clear and bright as a child's, the glance of which
would have made any man's head reel--cheeks that were more delicately
moulded than the marbles of Michael Angelo, and a grace that was
perfect, complete, adorable.

And she was mine--still my own!

Strange that this sudden happiness was actually the sequel of a tragedy!

"It is really delightful to be back here again," she remarked to Lucie,
glancing round the room.  "How well I remember the old days when, in the
holidays, I came and stayed with you.  Nothing has changed.  The dear
old place is just the same."

"Yes," replied Lucie.  "I only wish we lived here more.  But father and
I are always abroad--always moving from place to place through France,
Germany, Spain, Italy, just as the fit takes us.  Nowadays, dear old dad
is really like the Jew-errant.  He can't remain more than a few days in
one place--can you, dad?" she asked, laughing across at him.

"No, my dear," was his response in a strange voice.  "I must travel--
travel--always travel.  To keep moving is part of my nature, I believe."

"Only fancy! he's here in England!" she remarked to Ella.  "It's really
wonderful!"

While this conversation was in progress I was afraid that old Miss
Miller might refer to my call upon her; but fortunately she either did
not catch my name when introduced, or did not connect me with her
mysterious visitor.

The owner of Studland Manor was, I saw, somewhat uneasy when his
daughter began to explain how constantly they travelled.  He seemed a
little annoyed that Lucie should tell us that they were constantly
moving, instead of living quietly by the Mediterranean outside Leghorn,
as he would have me believe.

The old-fashioned Empire clock beneath its glass shade, standing on the
chimney-piece, struck eleven, and I rose resolutely to take my leave.  I
had expressed pleasure at my new-found happiness, shook hands all round,
and asked leave to call on the morrow.

"Certainly--most certainly," answered Miller, in that breezy manner that
he had sometimes assumed towards me on our last meeting.  He was
essentially a man of moods, sometimes brooding and strange, at others
full of buoyant good-humour, "You are always welcome here, remember.
Perhaps you'll dine with us--just pot-luck--at seven to-morrow night?  I
don't expect you get much that's worth eating down at the `Lion'.  We'll
induce Ella to stay over to-morrow, eh?"

My love protested that she would be compelled to return to Swanage in
the morning, but we would not hear of it.

Then Miller, with a delicacy which further showed that he had taken a
fancy to me, suggested that Ella might, perhaps, like to accompany me as
far as the lodge-gates, and a few moments later I went forth with my
love into the darkness.

For the first hundred paces, until we entered the black shadows of the
old beech hedge, we walked hand-in-hand, uttering no single word.

After that long interval of mourning and black despair, I was again at
her side--alone.  I was beside myself for very joy.

We halted.  It seemed an almost involuntary action.  Then taking her
tenderly in my arms I pressed my lips to hers in a first long passionate
caress.

"My love!"  I murmured, with heart overflowing, "my dearest love--you
for whom I have mourned, and whose dear memory I have ever revered--God
has given you back to me.  We have met again--you have been given to me
from the grave, never to part--never--_never_!"

To my blank amazement she turned her pale white face from mine, without
reciprocating my passionate kisses.  She sighed, and a shiver ran
through her slight frame.  Her lips were cold, and with her hands she
pushed me from her with averted face.

"Ella!"  I gasped, holding her, and looking into her fine eyes, though I
could see no expression there, so dark was it.  "Ella!  Darling, may I
not at least kiss you welcome on your return to me?  Are you not mine--
my own?"

She made no response, only pushing me farther from her very firmly,
although I felt that her tiny hands trembled.  She was overcome with
emotion, which she was in vain striving to suppress.

I held my breath--startled at her sudden and unaccountable change of
manner.  My heart was bursting.  What did it mean?

"Speak, dearest!"  I implored.  "Tell me the reason of this?  Are you
not still my love?  Are you not mine--as you were in the old days?"

Slowly she shook her head, and in a faltering voice, hoarse and low,
responded:--

"No, Godfrey!  After to-night we must never again meet.  Forgive me, but
I thought you had long ago forgotten me as utterly worthless."

"I have never forgotten, darling.  You are my own dear Ella, as always.
Therefore we are now inseparable--we _shall_ meet again."

"Impossible!" she declared decisively in that same hard tone, her voice
so entirely changed.  "I am no longer your love, Godfrey.  I may as well
confess to you the bitter truth at once--_I am another's_!"

CHAPTER FIFTEEN.

BETRAYS SOME HIDDEN INTRIGUE.

I fell back at Ella's words, as though I had received a blow full in the
chest.

"You--you are married!"  I gasped.

"No--not yet," was her low answer, in the same blank, mechanical voice.

"Then you love another man!"  I cried fiercely.

"In a month's time I am to be married."

"But you shall not, Ella!"  I exclaimed quickly and determinedly.  "You
are mine.  Surely I have a prior claim to you!  You loved me in the old
days--you surely cannot deny that!"

"I do not deny it, Godfrey," she said, in that same sweet, soft voice
that had so long rung in my ears.  "Unfortunately I did not know that
you still retained any affection for me.  I made inquiries, but no one
knew where you were, except that you were always abroad.  For aught I
knew you might already be married.  Therefore, I am not altogether to
blame."

"Who is the man?"  I asked, with a fierce jealousy rising within me.
Was this fellow, whoever he might be, to rob me, after all, of my love,
whom I had so fortunately rediscovered?

"I regret it, but I cannot tell you his name."

"Not tell me his name!"  I cried.  "Why not?  What mystery need there be
if you are to be married?"

"I have promised to say nothing until we are man and wife," she
answered.  "You alone, Godfrey, have I told because--well, because I
dare not again deceive you."

"Then you still love me!"  I exclaimed quickly.  "Confess the truth."

"What is the use of discussing affection?" she asked.  "The die is cast.
At the very moment when we meet again after this long separation, we
find ourselves debarred from happiness.  We can never become man and
wife."

"Why not?"

"Because I must marry this man."

"Must?"

"Yes," she whispered hoarsely.

"But you were in that position regarding Blumenthal," I remarked, much
puzzled.  In the darkness I could not distinguish the expression of her
countenance, but from her voice I knew that she was in desperation, and
that she was actually telling me a hideous truth.

"Misfortune seems to follow upon me," was her somewhat enigmatical
answer.

"Then be frank with me, Ella.  This man whom you will not name is
forcing you to marry him."

She was, however, silent.  Either she feared to commit herself, or she
was reflecting upon how much she dare tell me.

I heard her breath going and coming in quick gasps, and I could
distinguish that her pointed chin had sunk upon her chest in an attitude
of deep dejection.

"Why not tell me everything, darling?"  I went on, hoping to persuade
her to confess.  "Remember what I am to you; remember that our lives
have for so long been linked together, that ever in these years of our
separation you have been mine always, in heart and soul.  I have smiled
upon no other woman but your own sweet self, and never once has my heart
been stirred by the zephyr of love since that dark wet night when we
parted in London, and I went forth into the wide grey ocean of despair.
Ella, you--"

"Enough!  Enough!" she cried, suddenly interrupting me.  "Do not recall
the past.  All is too bitter, too melancholy.  Every single detail of
our last interview I have lived over and over again--I, who lied to you,
even though my heart was breaking.  Blumenthal gave me my freedom--and
yet--"

"And yet," I said very slowly, in a low, intense voice--"and yet you
have again fallen the victim of a man's ingenious wiles.  Tell me the
truth, dearest.  You have been entrapped--and you see no way of escape."

But she only shook her head sadly, saying:--

"No, I can say nothing--not even to you, Godfrey."

"Why?"  I cried, dismayed.  "Why all this secrecy and mystery?  Surely I
may, at least, know the man's name?"

"That I cannot tell you."

"Then he has forbidden you to reveal his real identity?"

She nodded in the affirmative.

"Which plainly shows that the fellow is in fear of something.  He's
afraid of exposure in some way or other.  I will not allow you, my own
dear love, to become the victim of this fellow!"  I said fiercely.  "He
may be an adventurer, for all you know--a man with an evil past.  He
has, without doubt, ascertained that on your father's death Wichenford
will be yours.  No, Ella, I will not allow you to marry this man who
forbids you to reveal his name."

"But what will you do?" she cried in alarm.

"What will I do?  I will tell him to his face that you are mine--that he
has no right to you.  And you will refuse to become his wife."

"Ah!--yes--but you must not do that," she declared.  "Why not?"

"No.  I beg of you to do nothing rash," she urged in breathless anxiety,
laying her hand upon my arm.

"But I will not allow you--my own well-beloved--to become the wife of
another!"

"Godfrey," she said, in so low a voice that it was scarcely above a
whisper, "you must.  There is no way of escape for me."

"Then you are a victim of this nameless man!"

She nodded in the affirmative.

"Who is he?  Tell me," I demanded.  "I have a right to know."

"Yes, you have, indeed, a right, but I have given my word of honour to
say nothing.  I cannot tell his name--even to you."

The mystery of it all somehow aroused my suspicions.  Was she deceiving
me?  Had she invented this nameless lover with some ulterior object?  No
man can ever fathom the ingenuity of a woman who intends to deceive.

"Permit me to say so, Ella, but you are not frank with me," I exclaimed
reproachfully.  "Why do you not tell me the whole truth, and allow me to
take what steps I think proper?  Cannot you realise all I feel at the
thought of losing you again--for the second time?  The past has been
black enough, but the future for me will be even darker if I go away in
the knowledge that you are the victim of a man unworthy of you.  Tell
me, dearest, do you doubt my love?"

"No," she sighed.  "I have never doubted it, Godfrey.  I know how
passionate is your affection; that you love me truly and well.  Yet it
is all to no purpose.  We have met again, it is true, and under the
strangest circumstances.  It would almost seem as though Fate has
brought us together, merely in order to tear us apart.  For us, Godfrey,
there, alas! can be no happiness," she added sadly, with a deep-drawn
sigh.

"Why not?"

For a few moments she did not reply.  I repeated my question, again
kissing the cold lips.

"Because--because," she faltered, "I am compelled to marry this man."

"He is compelling you, eh?"  I asked, between my teeth.

"Yes."

"And may I not stand as your champion?  May I, who love you so dearly,
extricate you from this trap?"

She shook her head slowly.

"It is not a trap, Godfrey," she answered.  "Rather call it force of
circumstances.  Those who told you I was dead lied to you, while I,
hearing nothing from you, naturally concluded that you had forgotten.
Therefore it is best for us to part again at once--to-night--for the
memories of the past are to us both too painful."

"Part from you, Ella!"  I cried.  "Never--never.  You must be mad.
While you breathe and live I shall remain near you as your friend, your
protector, nay, your lover--the man who loves you better than his own
life!"  I declared, taking her small hand and raising it reverently to
my lips.  "It is cruel of you, darling, to suggest us parting."

"No, it is the more merciful to both of us.  We must part--so the sooner
the better."

"You told me this on that never-to-be-forgotten night in London," I said
reproachfully.  "Therefore I cannot think that you are now in earnest."

"I am, Godfrey," she declared quickly.  "I do not deny to you that I
love you, but love between us is debarred.  I am unhappy--ah!  God alone
knows what trials I have borne--what horrors have been mine to witness--
and now to fill the cup of my grief I have met you only to find that you
still love me," she cried hoarsely, in a voice broken by emotion.

I held her trembling hand, and again kissed her cold, hard lips.

But she drew herself from me firmly, saying in a low, broken voice, full
of pathos:--

"No, Godfrey.  Let us say good-night here.  Let both of us go our own
way, as we have done before; both of us, however, now confident in each
other's love, even though our lives lie far apart.  Remember me only as
an unhappy woman who, through no fault of her own, is prevented from
becoming your wife.  Think of me still as your Ella of the old sweet
days, and I will remember you, my Godfrey--the--the man I love.  I--"

But she could utter no further word, for she burst into a flood of
bitter tears.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN.

INTRODUCES MR GORDON-WRIGHT.

Next morning, after a night of dark reflections, spent at the dormer
window of the village inn, I called at the Manor House as early as the
convenances would permit.

Lucie, cool in a white blouse and pique skirt, met me in the hall, and,
to my surprise, told me that Ella had already departed.  At seven
o'clock she asked that she might be driven back to Swanage to rejoin her
father, as they were leaving early on the motor-car.

She was as surprised as I myself was at this sudden decision to leave,
for she expected that she would remain there for another day at least,
now that we had again met.

"Didn't she tell you that she was leaving early?"  Lucie asked, looking
me straight in the face.

"No.  I certainly expected to find her here," I said, as she led me into
the old-fashioned morning-room sweet with the odour of pot-pourri in the
big Oriental punch-bowls.

I was utterly taken aback by her announcement.

When I had parted from my love she had declared that to meet again was
useless, but I had assured her that in the morning I would call--that
now we had met I would not again leave her.  Had she not confessed her
love for me?  Did we not love each other with a fond, mad passion?  And
yet my darling had, it appeared, fallen beneath the influence of some
nameless fellow, who was, no doubt, a scoundrel and an adventurer!
Should I calmly stand by and allow her to ruin her life and mine?  No.
A thousand times, no.  And as I stood there in silence in the
low-ceilinged old room with Lucie Miller at my side, I made a firm and
furious resolve that my Ella should not again escape me.  Our love,
however, seemed ill-fated.  The remembrance of that night in Bayswater
ever arose within my memory.  Again how curious it was, that through the
dead I had found the living.  By the death of Nardini I had rediscovered
my lost love.

I wondered whether I should confide in Lucie and explain what my love
had told me, or whether it was best to allow her, at least for the
present, to remain in ignorance?  I decided, after due reflection, upon
the latter course.

"I, of course, thought that she had wished you good-bye, and made an
appointment for another meeting," Lucie said.  "In fact, both my father
and myself were greatly surprised when she came and asked that the horse
might be put to.  And yet--" and without finishing her sentence, she
looked mysteriously into my face.

"And yet what?"  I asked.

For a few moments she was silent, hesitating to explain.  I saw by her
face that something had puzzled her.  We had so quickly become friends,
and our friendship had been cemented by our mutual acquaintanceship with
Ella Murray, that we had found ourselves speaking perfectly frankly as
though we had known each other for years.

"Well--will you pardon me for asking you a rather impertinent question,
Mr Leaf?" she said.

"Why, certainly."

"You'll perhaps think me curiously inquisitive, but how long were you
with Ella in the avenue after you left last night?"

"About half an hour."

"Not more?"

"No.  I can fix it, because I noted the time by that long grandfather
clock in the hall as we went out, and I looked at my watch when I got
back to the inn.  I was three-quarters of an hour in getting back to
Studland."

"That's rather strange," she remarked, with a distinct note of suspicion
in her voice.

"Why?"

"Well--because Ella was gone nearly two hours and a half.  My father
went to bed, and I remained up for her.  Wasn't she with you?"

"Certainly not," was my prompt answer, much surprised at her statement.

"Then something must have occurred after she left you," my companion
said.

"After she left me!  What do you mean?"

"A very long time elapsed before her return," Lucie remarked.  "She may
have been alone--but I think not."

"Who was with her?"

"How can we tell?"

"But what causes you to think that Ella was not alone?"

"By her strange manner when she returned.  She was pale and breathless,
as though she had been hurrying, and although she had pinned it up I
noticed that the sleeve of her blouse was torn, and that her wrist bore
dark marks as though she had had a desperate struggle with some one."

"Was she attacked by some tramp or other, I wonder?"  I cried, amazed.

"She refused to tell me anything save that she was rather upset.  She
seemed in great fear that my father should have knowledge of the affair,
and made me faithfully promise not to tell him.  Her hair was awry, and
some of the lace at the throat was torn as though some person had seized
her and tried to strangle her.  Indeed, while speaking to me she placed
her hand at her throat, as if it pained her.  Alarmed at her appearance,
I inquired what was the matter, but she would only tell me vaguely that
she was not very well.  I at once jumped to the conclusion that you had
quarrelled."

"We certainly had no quarrel, Miss Miller," I quickly reassured her.

"Then it is evident that she was attacked by some one!  Yet it is
curious that, intimate friends that we are, she would tell me nothing of
the incident."

"She wished to shield her assailant, perhaps," I remarked, much puzzled.

"It certainly seems so.  Seeing her so pale, and believing her about to
faint, I took her to the dining-room and gave her some brandy.  She
sipped it, and a moment afterwards burst into tears.  I sat with her for
nearly half an hour trying to learn the mystery of her unhappiness.  I
asked her quite frankly if she had quarrelled with you, but she replied
in the negative.  Under the light, as she sat in the dining-room, I
remarked the great change in her.  Her countenance was pale as death,
her lips white, and her eyes bore a look of terror in them.  She was
undoubtedly in great fear.  But of what, I am unable to tell."

"Your surmise is, no doubt, correct.  She met some one unexpectedly--
some one who attacked her.  I wonder who it is?"

"She was evidently followed here this evening, and was, perhaps, seen
walking with you.  Your conversation, as you walked down to the lodge,
might have been overheard."

"Probably.  But surely, Miss Miller, the incidents of last night were
very remarkable ones.  I followed you and I met my love.  And then, just
at the moment of my re-found happiness, she has gone again without a
word.  Indeed, when I reflect, the incidents of last night hardly seem
real.  I find myself doubting whether it was not all a dream, and would
really hesitate to believe in its reality if you, too, had not been
present--if you, too, had not seen and spoken with her."

"Yes, it is curious--very curious.  I was quite as startled by her
sudden appearance as you were.  It is inexplicable.  I, too, believed
she was dead.  I heard so from half a dozen people, and I can't help
thinking, Mr Leaf, that there was some deep ulterior motive in
spreading such a report concerning her."

"She's a mystery," I declared; "a complete mystery."

"She is--and yet do you not find her far more beautiful than in the old
days?  I do."

"Perhaps her beauty is fatal--like that of so many women," I sighed.
"The source of many a woman's unhappiness is to be found in her face."

"Last night tragedy was written deeply upon hers," my companion said, in
a low, sympathetic voice.  "I wonder what has occurred?"

I, too, wondered.  Her firm refusal to allow me to kiss her upon the
lips showed her either to be in deadly fear of the jealousy of another;
or that she was true to the vow she had given, even though she still
loved me.  Yet who could be this person whom she had undoubtedly met
after we had parted?  Why had he attacked her?  Why had she fled again
so quickly?  Was she in fear of some one who was still lurking in the
vicinity?  A sense of deadly chilliness stole over me.

The whole affair was, indeed, a mystery, yet not so utterly bewildering
as were certain of the events which followed--events which were so
strange and startling that they formed a problem that was for so long
beyond solution.

Being so passionately devoted to Ella I determined to follow her, demand
an explanation of the attack upon her and seek to discover the identity
of her unknown lover--the man whom she had admitted to me she was to
marry under compulsion.

I had risen from my chair, expressing my intention of driving into
Swanage in the hope that she had not already left, when the door opened,
and a dark, well-dressed man about forty, clean-shaven, having the
appearance of a naval officer and dressed in a dark grey flannel suit,
came forward with extended hand to my companion, wishing her
good-morning.

From his easy manner I saw that he was a guest in the house, although on
the previous night I had not seen him.

"Will you allow me to introduce you?"  Lucie said, and next instant
presented the newcomer to me as "My father's friend, Mr Gordon-Wright."

The visitor turned to take the hand I extended to him, and raised his
eyes to mine.

The conventional greeting and assurance of pleasure at the meeting froze
upon my lips.

We had met before--under circumstances that were, to say the least, both
startling and strange.

In that instant I recognised how that the mystery had deepened a
thousandfold.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN.

WHAT HAPPENED IN THE NIGHT.

Whether the recognition had been mutual I was unable to decide.

If it had the newcomer made no sign, but extended his hand and greeted
me, while I, striving to remain unconcerned, returned his welcome.

"Your father tells me he's driving over to Swanage at half-past ten,
Miss Lucie.  Are you coming with us?" he asked, as he lounged with his
hands deep in his jacket pockets, and an after-breakfast cigarette
between his lips.

"I don't think so," was her reply.  "I'm lunching with the Strong
girls."

"Oh, do come," urged the dark-faced man.  "You'd be back before one.
You promised me yesterday that you'd drive me somewhere."

"So I will--to-morrow, perhaps."

I watched the man's thin shaven face, and looked into his grey eyes in
silence.  His was a countenance striking on account of its clear-cut
features, its mobile mouth, its high intellectual forehead, and its
protruding jaws--an eminently clever, good-humoured face, and yet the
expression in the eyes was, somehow, out of keeping with the rest of the
countenance.

He laughed lightly, making some chaffing remarks, whereat the slight
flush that arose in Lucie's cheeks told me that she was not altogether
averse to his evident admiration.  He was a pleasant fellow--but,
nevertheless, a mystery.

His appearance there had, for two reasons, startled me.  The first was
because I had no idea that Miller had a male visitor, and the second was
because I recognised him as a person whom I had long desired to
rediscover.

The last occasion I had seen him he had called himself Lieutenant
Shacklock, R.N.  It was in very different circumstances.  He had worn a
moustache and beard, and affected a gold-rimmed monocle.  His personal
appearance as he stood there laughing with Lucie was, however, very
different, yet those cold grey, close-set eyes were the same.  They wore
an expression that could never be altered or disguised.

We spoke together once or twice, and I began to feel convinced that he
was unaware of our previous meeting.

"Yes," he remarked to me.  "Beautiful old place this.  I wonder my
friend Miller doesn't live here more.  If I were in his place I'm sure
I'd prefer it to wandering about the Continent."

"You've been here before, I suppose?"

"Many times.  Miller, when he's home, generally invites me," and then he
turned to Lucie, by whom he was undoubtedly attracted.  Little wonder,
indeed, when one recognised how handsome she was.

I again stood silent, my eyes turned upon the spruce man's face--the
face that brought back to my mind a curious and mysterious incident in
my wandering life abroad.

When one travels on the Continent as I had travelled, spending years of
aimless wandering and lazy idling in the halls and smoking-rooms of
hotels of the first order, making passing acquaintances of men and women
of all grades and all nations, listening to music in illuminated
gardens, and sometimes wandering with some fair _table-d'hote_
acquaintance beneath the stars, one meets with some queer adventures.  I
had met with a good many.  One of them I now found myself recalling.

Three winters before I found myself, after the brilliant season at Monte
Carlo, at a little sea-side resort called Nervi, which, as travellers
know, is a few miles beyond Genoa, on the way to Rome.  You have
possibly looked out of the train and there obtained a glimpse of the
blue Mediterranean beating upon its brown rocks; you have admired the
splendid white villas of the Genoese merchants, and you have, probably,
noticed behind the little railway station a great hotel garden, with
green lawns and a splendid avenue of spreading palms.

In that garden one April night after dinner I was strolling and smoking
with two men, who were friends.  We had met casually in the hotel a few
days before; a pleasant word or two, cocktails in company, a proffered
cigar, and we at once became acquaintances, as is the way of
cosmopolitans.  The elder was named Blenkap, a man of sixty, a wealthy
ironmaster from Pittsburg; while Shacklock, the other, was much younger,
smart, and had just retired from the Navy.

That night we wandered through the gardens to the sea, which lay like
glass beneath the light of the white Italian moon, with the waves
sighing softly upon the shingle.  But Blenkap, after half an hour,
complained of being rather unwell, and while the lieutenant went into
the town to purchase some cigarettes I accompanied his friend back to
the hotel.

It was then about ten o'clock, and refusing to allow me to call a
doctor, the American went to his room.  At two o'clock in the morning I
was awakened by the night-porter, who said that number ninety-seven had
asked him to call me.  Hastily I dressed, and, on going along the
corridor, found Blenkap in bed in a state of collapse.

"I'm very ill; the pains in my head are terrible," he whispered to me.
"Will you call a doctor--somebody who speaks English, if possible?"

His white face alarmed me, and I left him and went along to the
lieutenant's room at the other end of the corridor.  To my knock there
was, however, no response, but on turning the handle and opening the
door, I found the room in darkness and empty.  He had not returned.
Therefore I hurried out, and in half an hour returned with an Italian
doctor who spoke a little English.

On entering the room I noticed that the doctor sniffed the air
mysteriously as he crossed to the patient, who I now saw was
unconscious.  He examined him, asked me a few brief questions, and then
fixing his eyes upon me, exclaimed in Italian:--

"This is a rather curious affair, signore."

"Why?"  I inquired.  "The gentleman was taken this evening while we were
walking together.  He complained of bad pains in his head and stomach."

"Yes, but who gave him the anaesthetic?" asked the doctor.

"Anaesthetic!"  I exclaimed.  "Why nobody, as far as I know."

"Well, chloroform has been given him, and quite recently.  He struggled
against it--don't you see?" and he indicated the American's clenched
hands and the disordered bed.  "How long were you absent?"

"About half an hour."

"Then some one must have come here while you were away," the doctor
declared, stroking his dark beard very thoughtfully.  At first I was
alarmed lest the unfortunate American might die, but the doctor, after
due examination, assured me that there was really no danger.  For half
an hour we sat and waited, until at length the man to whom the
anaesthetic had been so mysteriously administered regained
consciousness.  It was a slow recovery, but when at length his dull eyes
fell upon me he beckoned me to him and with excited gestures pointed to
a leather-covered box beneath a table opposite.  I pulled it out and
tried the lock.  It was still secure, and he nodded in satisfaction.
Presently the doctor left, and I returned to bed, but imagine my blank
amazement next morning when, just as I was sipping my coffee in my room,
Blenkap dashed in, crying:--

"I've been robbed!  That fellow, Shacklock, did it!  He must have crept
into my room while you were away, rendered me senseless, took the key
from the gold chain I always wear around my neck, opened the box,
extracted the whole of the money and jewellery, relocked the box, and
then had the audacity to replace the chain around my neck!"

"But he is your friend?"  I exclaimed, with astonishment.

"I only met him a fortnight ago at the Grand at San Remo," he answered.
"He was there with a friend of his--probably a thief also.  But he came
on here alone with me.  The fellow has taken over eighty thousand
dollars!"

I hurried with him to the _questore_, or chief of police, and telegrams
were quickly despatched hither and thither, but the thief had evidently
got back to Genoa by the train at three o'clock in the morning, and
embarked at once upon some ship for a Mediterranean port--Naples,
Marseilles or Algiers.  At any rate, though I remained a month in Nervi,
we never heard further either of the easy-going naval man, or of the
eighty thousand dollars in American notes and negotiable securities.
Without doubt it was intended by the thief, or thieves, to throw the
first suspicion upon myself, but fortunately the night-porter stated
most positively that he had seen the lieutenant coming from his friend,
Blenkap's room, ten minutes before my return with the doctor.  The man
had left the main door of the hotel ajar in order to admit us, and it
was evident that by that means the thief got away unnoticed.

The robbery had been an ingenious and audacious one, and showed the
clever cunning of a master-hand.

As you have, no doubt, already guessed, the man who so cleverly got hold
of Blenkap's money, and who had escaped so swiftly, I now recognised as
the affable Lieutenant Shacklock, the intimate friend and guest of James
Harding Miller.

Was not his presence in that house sufficient to convince me that what
had been suspected of Miller was more than a mere surmise?  It had been
declared that Lucie's father, though a county gentleman, was also head
of the most daring association of criminals in Europe.  It seemed to me
that Gordon-Wright, alias Shacklock, was one of his ingenious
lieutenants whom he was entertaining in his cosy retreat--planning some
new scheme perhaps--and who was, at the same time, an ardent admirer of
the beautiful girl whose unhappiness and deadly peril was so great a
mystery.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN.

PLIGHT AND PURSUIT.

I left the Manor with my eyes dim and my heart beating fast with a
sickening pain.  I moved down the road without quite well knowing where
I went.

My well-beloved had again escaped me.  It was my duty to follow her, to
learn the truth, to save her--my duty to her, as well as to myself.

Mystery followed upon the back of mystery.  In those brief days, since
the advent of the fugitive Italian at Shepherd's Bush, I had become
enmeshed in a veritable web of entangled events which seemed to grow
more extraordinary and more inexplicable every hour.

My meeting with the man Shacklock proved, beyond doubt, the source of
Mr Miller's income.  Finding Lucie's father such an affable and
gentlemanly man, I had entirely refused to credit Sammy's story.
Nevertheless, Lucie herself had corroborated it, inasmuch as she had
described her love at Enghien and its tragic sequel; while I, myself,
had recognised in Gordon-Wright the clever international thief who had
decamped with Blenkap's valuables.  And this man was actually Miller's
most intimate friend!

To Lucie I made no mention of my intention, but half an hour later I was
in a dogcart hired from the "Lion," driving at a furious pace over the
Ballard Down into Swanage, where, at the hotel I had previously visited
on my arrival, I inquired for Miss Murray.

"The lady left with a party in a motor-car an hour ago," was the reply
of the young person in black satin, whose duty appeared to be to keep
the books and order about the waiters.

"Gone!"  I ejaculated.  "Where?"

"Well, when people go off in a car we don't generally know their
destination.  Motor-cars are so very uncertain, you see."

"Did they arrive here on the car?"  I inquired eagerly.  "No.  Mr
Murray and his daughter came over by boat from Bournemouth.  The motor
arrived last night with a gentleman, a lady and the chauffeur."

"Pardon me," exclaimed a man's voice at my elbow--the hotel proprietor
who had overheard all our conversation.  "Are you a detective?" he
asked, in a rather low, confidential tone.

"No.  Why?"

"Well--" he hesitated.  "Only because there seemed to be something
rather funny about Mr Murray--that's all."

"Something funny about him?  How?"

"Well, from the moment he came here, till the moment he went away, he
never came out of his room.  And when he did, he was wearing a
motor-coat with the collar turned up around his chin and goggles which
entirely disguised him."

"Not at all a suspicious circumstance, surely?"  I remarked, though
inwardly much interested.  "On these white dusty roads every one must
wear goggles."

"Of course.  But when people come to Swanage they generally go out and
look about the town and the bay.  Mr Murray, however, shut himself up
and saw nobody, while his daughter drove over to Studland, where she
stayed the night and returned about an hour before the motor started."

"I'm going to follow that motor.  I have a reason," I said.  "Don't you
think the chauffeur might have told one of the stable-hands or
garage-men--if you have a garage here--as to his destination?  There's a
kind of freemasonry among chauffeurs, by which all of them know each
other's roads."

"I'll see," replied the obliging proprietor.  "Come with me."

He conducted me through to the back of the house, where a large
courtyard had been recently converted into a garage.  There were several
cars in the coach-houses around, while in the centre of the yard a
clean-shaven young man was turning a hose upon a dark red 16-horse
"Fiat."

"Gibbs, where has that blue car gone to this morning--the one that left
an hour ago?"

"The 40 `Mercedes,' sir?  Gone to some place beyond Exeter, sir.
They're on a big tour."

"You don't know the name of the place?"  I asked the man anxiously.

"The chauffeur did tell me, but it was a funny name, an' I've
forgotten."

"They've gone direct to Exeter, in any case?"

"Yes--by Dorchester, Chard and Honiton.  'E asked me about the road."

"How far is it to Exeter?"

"About seventy-eight or eighty miles."

"I could get there by train before they arrived," I remarked.

"Ah!  I doubt it, sir," was the man's reply.  "That's a good car they've
got, and if you went by train you'd 'ave to go right up to Yeovil.
They'd be through Exeter long before you got there."

"That's so," remarked the hotel proprietor.  "From here to Exeter by
rail is a long cross-country journey."

"Then could I get a car?  Is any one of these for hire?"

"This one 'ere belongs to Saunders, down in the town.  'E lets it out
sometimes," replied Gibbs, indicating the red car he had been cleaning.

"Then I'll have it--and you'll drive me, eh?  We must overtake them."

"Very good, sir," replied the man, and then I returned to the hotel to
telephone to the owner and fix the price.

Gibbs quickly filled the tank with petrol, poured water into the
radiator, examined the tyres, pumping one that he found a little down;
then he washed himself, put on his leather jacket and cap, and mounted
to the wheel.

A quarter of an hour after I had first entered the garage I was sitting
at the chauffeur's side as the car slowly made its way up the crooked
quaint old-fashioned main street of Swanage and out on the big white
road that ran up hill and down valley, the picturesque highway to
Dorchester.  Up to Corfe Castle the way was nearly all uphill, but the
"Fiat" ran splendidly, and in the narrow winding road where we met many
pleasure parties in _chars-a-banc_ Gibbs quickly showed himself a
competent driver.

Seldom he blew his horn, yet he handled the car with a care that at once
convinced me that he was a reliable chauffeur.

As we skirted the great mound upon which stood the cyclopean walls of
Corfe, magnificent relics of the bygone feudal age, and ran again out of
the little village and up on to Purbeck Hill, he handed me a pair of
goggles, saying:--

"You'd better have these, sir.  We're going through a lot of dust
presently, and we've a dead head-wind."

I put them on, and as I did so he increased the speed, remarking:--

"Fortunately, there ain't any police traps 'ere.  We aren't like they
are in Surrey.  I got fined a fiver at Guildford a month ago, an' I was
only goin' fourteen miles an 'our.  But it ain't any good defendin'.
The police are always in the right," he added, with a sigh.

"Do you think that we shall overtake them?"  I inquired anxiously, for
at all hazards I wanted to see and speak again with Ella.  What she had
told me excited my curiosity and aroused my determination that she
should make no further self-sacrifice.

"It all depends," was his vague answer.  "They've got a `forty,' you
know, an' can do these hills much better than we can.  But they may get
a puncture or a tyre-burst."

"But as to speed.  They won't go quicker than we are travelling?"  I
inquired.

"Not if they don't want to get 'ad up," he grinned, and I then
recognised that we were on a wide flat road, travelling at nearly forty
miles an hour, and raising a perfect wall of dust behind us.  "There's
one or two level-crossings, too, that may delay 'em."

"And us also, eh?"

"Perhaps," he said.  "But what I'm going to do is to go at a greater
speed than they've gone.  We've got nearly an hour and a half to make
up, by some means or other."

And lowering his head he set his shoulders in his seat and still
increased the speed until we flew at a pace such as I had never before
travelled in any motor-car.  The engines ticked away with rhythmical
music, the machinery hummed with that even tone which tells the
practised motorist that his cylinders are working properly, and without
once pulling up, we soon found ourselves slowing down to enter the quiet
old county town of Dorchester.

At Charminster, where the two high-roads parted, we had news of the blue
car we were following.  A man breaking stones at the roadside informed
us that it had passed about half an hour in front of us.

"It was going at a terrible speed," he added, in broad Dorset dialect.
"They'll get summoned--you see."

This caused us to put on more pace, heedless of whether any pair of
constables--or hedgehogs as motorists call them--were lurking near the
road.  Gibbs put on all the speed he could get out of his engines, and
we literally flew through Stratton and Frampton.  He was, it seemed,
determined to earn the couple of sovereigns I had promised him as reward
if successful.

The afternoon went slowly by.  The sky became overcast, and there was a
slight shower, but we did not pull up, tearing ever onward through
Chard, over the Devonshire border and round the big hill of Dumpdon to
old-fashioned but unpicturesque Honiton.

We had now only seventeen miles or so before reaching Exeter.  Slowly we
descended the main street which dropped very steeply to a bridge over a
small stream, and then out again upon the broad white undulating road,
fringed almost continuously by trees and whitewashed and thatched
cottages--the main road that runs from London through Hounslow to the
west.

Suddenly we dipped beneath a railway bridge, and the road rising again
our eager eyes saw about a mile in front of us a travelling cloud of
dust.  As we looked the car before us went round a slight bend in the
flat open road, and there showed a flash of bright blue.

"Look!" cried Gibbs excitedly, "that's the car!  We must overtake them,"
and setting his teeth again he put on all speed possible.

Slowly, almost imperceptibly, we seemed to be overtaking my fugitive
love who was, of course, all unconscious of being followed, when, just
as we ran over the bridge which crosses the Clyst, there was a loud
report like a pistol shot, and Gibbs was compelled to instantly apply
the brake, uttering a loud exclamation of disappointment and chagrin.

Our off rear tyre had burst!

My love would be in Exeter and beyond reach long before we could put on
a new tube and tyre.

I stood watching the fast receding car, my heart sinking within me.
Ella was before my very eyes, escaping me--never to return.

I knew that the intention was to evade me in future.  And yet how madly
I loved her.  No matter what she said or what she did, she was still
mine--mine!

CHAPTER NINETEEN.

THE BLUE MOTOR-CAR.

Gibbs was the first to speak.  He examined the burst critically, glanced
at the fast disappearing car, and, turning to me, asked:--

"Shall we still try, sir?  If you'll help me we'll be on the road again
in twenty minutes."

"Yes," I cried, "let's try," and throwing off my coat, I began in
earnest to take out the spare tyre while he got out the jack and tools.

While I unscrewed the bolts, he jacked up the car, and in ten minutes
the burst tyre was off, and we were adjusting the new one.  A new inner
tube I found under the front seat, and we soon adjusted it, Gibbs
pumping it up while I put away the tools and strapped on the broken
tyre.

I glanced at the clock on the car, and saw that we had been just
eighteen minutes, then up we got, and, without much preliminary, moved
away again tearing at breakneck speed through Ottery St Mary and a
dreary little place called Honiton Clyst, then over a bad road among
small and dingy houses from Heavitree into Exeter.  At the Gordon
memorial-lamp we took the right-hand road, found the tram-line and
passed up Paris Street into High Street, and on to the cathedral, where
we pulled up before the "Clarence," hoping to obtain some news of the
blue "Mercedes."

It, however, had not been seen.  At Pople's, at the "Globe" and the
"Half Moon" we inquired, but without success.  The car had not been seen
in any of the main streets of the city, therefore we could only conclude
that it had passed round the outskirts and taken either the Crediton or
the Teignmouth road.  From south of the city a dozen different ways lead
off the Okehampton road, therefore it seemed certain that our
unfortunate accident had negatived all our attempts to overtake Mr
Murray and his party.

Again we were thwarted, until Gibbs suddenly recollected that in Paris
Street we had passed a cycle works where petrol was sold, and we turned
the car and made eager inquiry there.

Yes.  A big blue car had stopped there, and refilled its tank about an
hour before.  The chauffeur had inquired the road to Plymouth, and the
manager had advised him to take the road by Bickington, Buckfastleigh
and Ivybridge.  The distance to Plymouth, we were told, was forty-four
miles, therefore thanking our informant we reversed the car and were
soon out again on the old coach-road through Alphington and
Shillingford, hoping that some similar mishap to that which had occurred
to us might delay the party we were endeavouring to overtake.

Again we raced along against time, up over the Great Haldon hills where
we had grand views across the open country, through old-fashioned
villages of the true Devon type, past a quaint old mill with high
sloping roof, and narrowly escaping a collision with a farmer's cart
just as we were entering Bickington.

Twice we inquired of men we met on the road whether they had seen the
car, and each reply was in the affirmative.  Therefore we kept an eager
look-out far ahead to distinguish the receding cloud of dust which would
betray its presence.

At full speed we tore along, the motor humming its rhythmic music and
the dust rising in a dense column behind.  I shrewdly suspect that
before starting Gibbs had smeared a little oil across part of the number
both front and rear, in order that the dust should render it puzzling to
any lurking constable.

"If we don't get fined for this, sir, we ought to," declared Gibbs, with
a laugh, looking at me through his goggles, as we sped across a
wide-open stretch of moor with the head-wind blowing the white dust full
in our faces.  Down a steep hill we ran until, rounding a sudden bend in
the road, an exclamation of joy escaped us both, as we saw the car that
had evaded us so long, stationary.

The chauffeur was in the act of putting in a new inner tube to one of
the back tyres, while the passengers had descended and were walking
about the road.  A couple of farm labourers were looking on, their hands
stuck idly in their pockets, and as we approached all turned to look.

My first impulse was to stop and greet Ella, but next instant it
occurred to me that as I wore goggles, and an overcoat that she had
never seen, I was effectively disguised.

"Slow down, but don't stop," I said to Gibbs, and a few moments later we
passed the party, without, however, taking any notice of them.

The car was, as the man beside me had said, a splendid "Mercedes" of the
latest type, one of the best I had ever seen upon the road.  The
chauffeur was a smart fellow in uniform, probably French, and the party
who were awaiting the repairs consisted of Ella--in a neat
champagne-coloured motor-coat, with flat hat and a veil of the same
colour with a plate of talc in front instead of glasses--a dark-haired
lady somewhat older, also in motor clothes, a youngish man with a round
boyish clean-shaven face, and lastly Mr Murray.  The latter had so
altered that had I met him in the street I should certainly not have
recognised him.  His beard was now white, his hair grey, and upon his
face was a hard careworn look, in place of the easy nonchalant air he
wore in those well-remembered days when I had been a welcome guest at
Wichenford.

Ella was seated upon a stile chatting to her female companion, while her
father was standing on the road some distance away, in earnest
conversation with the young man.

Owing to my disguising dark goggles, I was able to look straight into
their faces without fear of recognition.  This was fortunate, for at
present I had no intention of revealing my identity.

Could that round-faced, fresh-complexioned man be the fellow who,
according to my love's own admission, held her in his power?

The very suspicion maddened me, causing my blood to rise.

Murray appeared to be speaking to him in confidence, giving him certain
instructions to which he was enlisting attentively, with brows knit, as
though what he heard was far from reassuring.

Who was the man?

His identity and his relation towards my well-beloved I determined to
ascertain.

"Let's go on slowly into the next place, whatever it is," I said.

"We're about five miles from Ashburton, sir," Gibbs replied.

"I want them to overtake us, and then we can follow them to their
destination," I said.

"They're going to Plymouth.  Wouldn't it be better for us to go on there
an' wait for 'em?" suggested the man.  "It's now five o'clock, and
they'll probably put up there for the night."

"No.  They are going farther than Plymouth," I said.  "It's a thousand
pities you can't remember where the chauffeur said they were going."

"Perhaps t

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