The Closed Book: Concerning the Secret of the Borgias Part 12

As they went by I heard the man, a strong, black-browed fellow of twenty-seven or so, exclaim, "_Accidenti_!" and knew that he was a Tuscan. The woman (old, brown-faced, and wrinkled) only sighed and dragged harder.

They went forward, turned the corner into Theobald's Road, and a few moments later the strident strains of "Soldiers of the Queen" rang out amid the bustle of the thoroughfare and the roar of traffic. They had evidently stopped before the public-house where I had borrowed the _Directory_, in the hope of earning a last copper or two before relinquis.h.i.+ng their day's work.

Attracted by the music, I strolled back towards the spot where they had halted, and as I did so encountered two persons. One was a tall, grey-haired, rather sad-looking old gentleman, dressed somewhat shabbily, wearing an old ulster, but without umbrella; the other was an extremely pretty, fair-haired girl of perhaps twenty-two, pale-faced, and evidently agitated, for she clung to his arm and was whispering something to him as she walked. She was apparently imploring him to hear her; but he went on stolidly, heedless of her words. Her dress was plain, and, it seemed to me, betrayed the pinch of poverty. Like her companion, she had no umbrella, and her plain sailor-hat and black jacket were sodden with the rain.

Her face, however, struck me as one of the most perfect I had ever seen in all my life. That woman whom I had met in the prior's study in Florence was certainly handsome; but hers was of an entirely different type of beauty, a face about which there certainly could be no two opinions, but a face full of tragic force and energy.

This woman, however, bore a sweet expression, rendered the more interesting by that earnest, imploring look as I pa.s.sed her by unnoticed. Her companion was, it struck me, a broken-down gentleman, while she herself possessed an air of refinement in face and figure, in spite of her shabby attire, that caused me to set her down as no ordinary girl.

Her extreme beauty made me turn after them.

The old man, with his thin, hard face, yet gentle eyes, was still obdurate. She held back, but without a word he closed her arm to his and pulled her forward. He seemed to walk mechanically, while she appeared bent on arresting his farther progress.

Suddenly, as I strolled on behind them, they came in full view of the window and its mysterious signal.

"Ah!" I overheard the old fellow cry in a tone of satisfaction. "See!

As I hoped. At last--at last!"

"It means death--death!" the girl added in a tone more hoa.r.s.e and despairing than ever I have before heard in a woman.

I had been close enough to overhear the words that confirmed my suspicion, and I must confess they held me dumbfounded. I had expected to meet some slinking thief or some hulking receiver of stolen property, who would come to look for the bear cub in the window. Certainly I had, on first encountering the pair, never for a moment believed that the signal had been placed there for them.

The man raised his head again, as though to make certain that his eyes had not deceived him, and as he did so I caught a glance of the girl's white countenance in the wind-blown light of the street-lamp.

Never, to my last day, shall I forget the terrible expression of blank despair in those wonderful eyes. All light and life had died out of her fair face. She looked as though her young heart had, at the sight of that fateful sign, been frozen by some nameless terror.

I had seen plays in which a woman's despair was depicted, but never had I witnessed real despair until that moment. Hideous is the only word that describes it.

At the end of the short thoroughfare they turned and walked back past the house, feigning, however, not to notice the lighted window. The instant I had overheard these strange e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.ns I crossed the road and hurried on round the corner out of sight, in order that they should not detect me following them; but, watching their return, I turned again and went after them into Theobald's Road.

On through the rain they trudged in the direction of Oxford Street, wet to the skin, for the down-pour still continued without cessation, and the pavements shone beneath the gaslights. Neither tram-cars nor cabs attracted them, for it seemed more than likely that their extreme poverty did not allow them the luxury of a conveyance.

The girl's hand was held to her breast as she walked, as though to stay the fierce beating of her heart, but her companion strode on steadily with fixed purpose and deep-knit brows.

I had been loath to relinquish my vigil before that silent house, fearing that the little old woman who had entered there might emerge again and carry my precious Arnoldus with her. Yet, on the other hand, this strange pair, who had come there in secret and read the signal, deeply interested me, and my curiosity impelled me to follow them.

The loud, ear-piercing runs of a street-piano suddenly recalled to my mind the pair of Italians I had noticed ten minutes before; and as we pa.s.sed them playing before another public-house near Southampton Row I halted for a moment, stepped aside, and spoke to the beetle-browed young Tuscan in his own tongue.

"Listen. I want you to a.s.sist me," I exclaimed quickly. "There's no time to lose, and you'll get half a sovereign if you do as I direct. Go back alone to Harpur Street--that short turning you came up ten minutes ago--and watch a house with a stuffed bear in the upper window--Number 106. If anyone comes out, follow her--especially a little old woman.

Wait there till I rejoin you. Will you do it?"

"Certainly, signore," was the young fellow's prompt reply. "Number 106, you say? Very well, trust me. My mother, here, can hire somebody to help her home with the _organino_."

"Very well. What's your name?"

"Farini Enrico," he replied, placing the surname first, in Italian style; "born at Ponte Moriano, Provincia di Lucca. The signore knows Tuscany--does he?"

"Yes," I answered. "Wait for me near that house; but don't let anyone see you are watching. I'll return as soon as possible. Lose no time."

And I hurried away after the old man in the long ulster and his white-faced companion.

They had gained upon me considerably; but I soon overtook them, satisfied that in any case my watch upon the house would not be relinquished. I had lived sufficiently long in Tuscany to be able to read the Tuscan character, and I saw by the young man's manner that he was not the usual _contadino_ who comes to London to grind an organ, but from his speech of quite a superior cla.s.s. He wore his felt hat slightly askew, and beneath a rather forbidding exterior I detected that he possessed a keen sense of humour. His black, s.h.i.+ning eyes laughed merrily when he mentioned his own village--a village I knew quite well, a few miles beyond the quiet, aristocratic old town of Lucca, and I saw that the very fact that I had spoken to him in his own tongue had at once secured him my servant. Italians are such children when you know them thoroughly!

I had little time for reflection, however, for the traffic of Oxford Street, although the night was wet, was considerable; and, while having some difficulty in keeping the pair in sight, I was also compelled to exercise a good deal of precaution in order to avoid recognition as the man who had encountered them in Harpur Street.

On they went at the same pace, heedless of the drenching rain, turning into Regent Street, then into Maddox Street, and across Grosvenor Square into Grosvenor Street, the centre of the West End. Suddenly, however, to my amazement, they ascended the steps of one of the best houses in the latter street; and the man, taking a latch-key from his pocket, opened the door with an air of proprietors.h.i.+p, and a moment later both disappeared from view, the door closing behind them.

Such a house, a veritable mansion in one of the most expensive thoroughfares in London, was the very last place I would have suspected to be their abode.

I repa.s.sed, and saw that it had been recently repainted, and presented a smart and handsome exterior. Flowers bloomed in the window-boxes, and a striped awning was spread over the portico. I noted that the number was 62A, and the next house I recognised as Viscount Lanercost's. The manner in which the shabby-genteel pair had slipped into the house showed secrecy, and yet the confident way in which the old man opened the door betrayed that he was no stranger to the place.

Again I had recourse to the pages of that book of revelation, the _London Directory_--which I obtained in a bar at the end of Park Lane, frequented mostly by gentlemen's servants--and there I found that the occupier was the Earl of Glenelg, the wealthy Scotch peer and ex-Under-Secretary, whose name had long been familiar to me, as no doubt it was to my readers, through the columns of the newspapers.

Could it be possible that the man in the shabby ulster for whom that mysterious signal had been placed in the window was actually his lords.h.i.+p himself?

If so, who was his white-faced companion--the beautiful woman who was terrorised?

CHAPTER THIRTEEN.

WHAT THE WATCHERS SAW.

Though utterly f.a.gged out, I hailed a pa.s.sing cab and drove back to the corner of Harpur Street, where, in the shadow, about half-way along the short thoroughfare, I discovered the young Italian keeping a watchful eye upon the house with the sign of the bear.

"No one has emerged, signore," he said to me in Italian. "I was here a few minutes after you spoke to me."

The blind was still up, and the signal still exhibited, the inmates evidently being unaware of the secret visit of the strange pair.

What connection could Father Bernardo and the old hunchback Graniani, away in Italy, have with that mysterious household?

"Has anyone pa.s.sed up the street during my absence?" I asked the merry-eyed Enrico.

"Several people, signore. One man, well-dressed, like a gentleman, stood for a moment looking up at the window yonder as though he expected to see someone there. But he was apparently disappointed, and pa.s.sed on."

"What kind of man?" I inquired eagerly. "Describe him."

"A signore with small, fair moustache, about forty. He carried an umbrella, so I could not see his face very well. He was tall, and walked erectly, almost like an officer. A four-wheeled cab waited for him up at the corner."

"He didn't actually pa.s.s the house?"

"No, signore. He merely walked down here sufficiently far to obtain a view of the window; then, having satisfied himself, turned back again."

In reply to my question, Enrico told me that he lived with his mother in Kirby Street, Hatton Garden, the thoroughfare running parallel with Saffron Hill. They have been five years in London: five sad, despairing years. Ah, the Englis.h.!.+ they were not _cattiva_. Oh, no! It was their amazing climate that made them what they were. He pitied London people.

How happy they would all be if they only lived under the blue sky of rural Tuscany! And so he went on, just as every poor Italian does who is doomed to the struggle and semi-starvation of life in our grey metropolis.

I read the young fellow's character like a book. He had served his military service at Bologna, and had been waiter in the officers' mess.

Then he and his mother emigrated to London from Genoa, attracted by the proverbial richness of the _Inglese_ and the report that waiters in restaurants were well paid. On arrival, however, he had soon discovered that the supply of Italian waiters was much in excess of the demand; therefore, he had been compelled to invest the ten pounds he had in a second-hand organ, and he and his mother picked up a living as best they could in the unsympathetic streets of London.

He seemed a good fellow, quite frank, and possessing that easy-going, careless manner of the true Tuscan, which never deserts him even when in circ.u.mstances of direst poverty. Your true son of the Tuscan mountains looks at the bright side of everything; a child in love, a demon in hatred, over-cautious with strangers, but easy and tractable in everything. I chatted to him for some twenty minutes, at the end of which time I resolved that he should a.s.sist me further in my investigations.

I told him how I had only arrived from Italy a few hours ago, and he grew at once excited. My train had actually pa.s.sed across the rippling Serchio within a few miles of Ponte Moriano, his own village! I told him of my long residence in Tuscany, a fact which attracted him towards me; for seldom your poor Italian of the curb becomes acquainted with an Englishman who understands his ways and his language. And when I explained that I wished him to a.s.sist me in a very important and secret undertaking he at once announced his readiness to do so.