Sir John Constantine Part 57

We spent the next five days in company with these strange fellow-lodgers, and more than once it gave me an uncanny feeling to turn in the midst of Mr. Fett's prattle and, catching the eye of Marc'antonio or Stephanu as they sat and listened with absolute gravity, to reflect on the desperate business we were here to do.

We went about the city openly, no man suspecting us. On the day after our arrival we discovered the Prince Camillo's quarters.

The Republic had lodged him, with a small retinue, in the Palazzo Verde, a handsome building (though not to be reckoned among the statelier palaces of the city), with a front on the Via Balbi, and a garden enclosed by high walls, around which ran the discreetest of _vicoli_. One of the Dorias, so tradition said, had built it to house a mistress, early in the seventeenth century. I doubt not the Prince Camillo found comfortable quarters there. For the rest, he had begun to enjoy himself after the fas.h.i.+on he had learnt in Brussels, returning to dissipation with an undisguised zest.

The Genoese--themselves a self-contained people, and hypocritical, if not virtuous--made less than a nine days' wonder of him, he was so engagingly shameless, so frankly glad to have exchanged Corsica for the fleshpots. There was talk that in a few days he would make formal and public resignation of his crown in the great hall of the Bank of Saint George. Meanwhile, he flaunted it in the streets, the shops, the theatres. His very publicity baulked us. We tracked him daily--his sister and I, in our peasant dress; but found never a chance to surprise him alone. His eyes, which rested nowhere, never detected us.

We hunted him together, not consulting Marc'antonio and Stephanu, but rather agreeing to keep them out of the way. Indeed I divined that the Princess's anxiety to hold him in sight was due in some degree to her fear of these two and what they might intend. For my part, I watched them of an evening, at Messer' Fazio's board, expecting some sign of jealousy. But it appeared that they had resigned her to me, and were content to be excluded from our counsels.

Another thing puzzled me. Public as the Prince made himself, he was never accompanied by his evil spirit (as I held him) the priest Domenico. Yet--_ame d.a.m.nee_, or master devil, whichever he might be--I felt sure that the key of our success lay in unearthing him.

So, while the Princess tracked her brother, I begged off at whiles to haunt the purlieus of the Palazzo Verde--for three days without success. But on the fourth I made a small discovery.

The rear of the Palazzo Verde, I have said, was surrounded by narrow alleys, of which that to the south was but a lane, scarcely five feet in width, dividing its garden from the back wall of another palace (as I remember, one of the Durazzi). Halfway up this lane a narrow door broke the wall of the Palazzo Verde's garden. I had tried this door, and found it locked.

On the afternoon of the fourth day, as I turned into this lane, a middle-aged man met and pa.s.sed me at the entrance, walking in a hurry. I had no proof that he came from the garden-door of the Palazzo Verde, but I thought it worthwhile to turn and follow him; which I did, keeping at a distance, until he entered a goldsmith's shop in the Strada Nuova, where presently, through the pane, I saw him talking with a customer across the counter. I retraced my steps to the lane. The door (needless to say) was closed; but behind it, not far within the garden, I heard a gentle persistent tapping, as of a hammer, and wondered what it might mean.

It spoke eloquently for the Prince Camillo's zest after pleasure that he pursued it abroad in spite of the weather, which was abominable.

A searching mistral blew through the streets for four days, parching the blood, and on the night of the fourth rose to something like a hurricane. Our players fought their way against it to the theatre, only to find it empty; and returned in the lowest of spirits.

The pretty Bianca was especially disconsolate.

Before dawn the gale dropped, and between eleven o'clock and noon, in a flat calm, the snow began, freezing as it fell.

The Prince Camillo did not show himself in the streets that day.

But towards dusk, as we pa.s.sed down the Via Roma, he drove by in an improvised sleigh with bells jingling on the necks of his horses.

He was bound for the theatre, which stood at the head of the street.

The Princess turned with me, and we were in time to see him alight and run up the steps, radiant, wrapped in furs, and carrying a great bouquet of pink roses, such as grow in the Genoese gardens throughout the winter.

But it appeared that, if we kept good watch on him, others had been keeping better; for, five minutes later, as we stood debating whether to follow him into the theatre, Marc'antonio and Stephanu emerged from its portico and came towards us.

"O Princess," said Marc'antonio, "we have seen him at length and had word with him. When we told him that you were here in Genoa, he looked at us for a moment like a man distraught--did he not, Stephanu?"

"One would have said he was going to faint," Stephanu corroborated.

"I think, with all his faults, he is terrified for your sake, for the risk you run. He implored us to get you away from the city; and when we told him it was impossible, he sent word that he would come to you after the play, and himself try to persuade you. We dared not let him know where we lodged, for fear of treachery; so, being hurried, we appointed the street by the Weavers' Gate, where, if you will meet him, masked, a little after nine o'clock, Stephanu and I will be near--in case of accidents--and doubtless the Cavalier also."

"Did he say anything of the crown, O Marc'antonio?"

"No, Princess, for we had not time. The crowd was all around us, you understand; and he drew up and talked to us, forcing himself to smile, like a n.o.bleman amusing himself with two peasants. For the crown, we shall leave you to deal with him."

"And I shall hold you to that bargain, O Marc'antonio," said she.

"But what will you two be doing with yourselves meanwhile?"

"With permission, Princess, we return to the theatre. We shall watch the play, and keep our eyes on him; and at half-past seven o'clock the girl Bianca dances in the ballet. Mbe! I have not witnessed a ballet since my days of travel."

"And I will run home, then, and fetch my mask. At nine o'clock, you say?"

"At nine, or a little after--and by the Weavers' Gate."

"And you will leave him to me? You understand, you two, that there is to be no violence."

"As we hope for Heaven, Princess."

"Farewell, then, until nine o'clock!" She dismissed them, and they returned to the portico and pa.s.sed into the theatre. "That is good,"

said she, turning to me with a sigh that seemed to lift a weight from her heart. "For, to tell the truth, I was afraid of them."

For me, I was afraid of them still, having observed some constraint in Marc'antonio as he told his story, and also that, though I tried him, his eyes refused to meet mine. To be sure, there was a natural awkwardness in speaking of the Prince to his sister. Nevertheless Marc'antonio's manner made me uneasy.

It continued to worry me after I had escorted the Princess back to our lodgings. Across the court, in the chamber over the archway, some one was playing very prettily upon a mandolin. In spite of the cold I stepped to the outer door to listen, and stood there gazing out upon the thick-falling snow, busy with my thoughts.

Yes, decidedly Marc'antonio's manner had been strange. . . .

While I stood there, a clock, down in the city, chimed out the half-hour. Its deep note, striking across the tinkle of the mandolin, fetched me out of my brown study. Half-past seven. . . .

I had an hour and a half to spare; ample time to step down to the Palazzo Verde and reconnoitre. If only I could hit upon some scent of the priest Domenico!

I started at a brisk pace to warm my blood, which had taken a chill from the draught of the doorway. The snow by this time lay ankle-deep, and even deeper in the pitfalls with which the ill-lit streets abounded; but in twenty minutes I had reached the Via Balbi.

The wind was rising; in spite of the snow driven against my face I had not noticed until I heard it humming in the alley which led under the shadow of the garden wall. I had scarcely noticed it before my ears caught the jingle of bells approaching swiftly down the Via Balbi.

"Eh?" thought I, "is the Prince returning, then, to change his dress?

Or has he sent home his carriage, meaning to pursue the adventure on foot?"

There was no time to run back to the street corner and satisfy my curiosity. The horses went clas.h.i.+ng past the head of the alley at a gallop, and presently I heard the front gates of the palace grind open on their great hinges. Half a minute later they were closed again with a jar, and almost immediately the clocks of the city began to toll out the hour.

Was it my fancy? Or did the last note die away with a long-drawn choking sound, as of some one struggling for breath? . . .

And, last time, it had been the tap-tap of a hammer. . . .

Surely, strange noises haunted this alley. . . .

I listened. I knew that I must be standing near the small door in the wall, though in the darkness I could not see it. The sinister sound was not repeated. I could be sworn, though, that my eyes had heard it; and still, for two minutes perhaps, I stood listening, my face lifted towards the wall's coping. Then indeed I heard something--not at all that for which I strained my ears, but a soft m.u.f.fled footfall on the snow behind me--and faced about on it, clutching at the sailor's knife I wore in my belt.

It was a woman. She had almost blundered into me as I stood in the shadow of the wall, and now, within reach of my arm, drew back with a gasp of terror. Terror indeed held her numb while I craned forward, peering into her face.

"Signorina Bianca!"

"But what--what brings you?" she stammered, still between quick gasps for breath.

In the darkness, close by, a door slammed.

"Ah!" said I, drawing in my breath. Stretching out a hand, I laid it on her shoulder, from which the cloak fell away, disclosing a frosty glint of tinsel. "So it was for _you_ the Prince drove home early from the theatre! But why is the door left open?"

Pretty Bianca began to whimper. "I--I do not know; unless some one has stolen my key." She put a hand down to fumble in the pocket of her cloak.

"Then we had best discover," said I, and drew her (though not ungently) to the door. I found it after a little groping and, lifting the latch--for the gust of wind had fastened it--thrust it open upon a light which, though by no means brilliant, dazzled me after the darkness of the alley.

I had counted on the door's opening straight into the garden.

To my dismay I found myself in a narrow vestibule floored with lozenges of black and white marble and running, under the wall to my left, towards an archway where a dim lamp burned before a velvet curtain. For a moment I halted irresolute, and then, slipping a hand under Bianca's arm, led her forward to the archway and drew aside the curtain.

Again I stood blinking, dazzled by the light of many candles--or were they but two or three candles, multiplied by the mirrors around the walls and the gleams from the gilded furniture? And what--merciful G.o.d, _what!_--was that foul thing hanging from the central chandelier?--hanging there while its shadow, thrown upward past the gla.s.s pendants, wavered in a black blot that seemed to expand and contract upon the ceiling?

It was a man hanging there, with his neck bent over the curtain's rope that corded it to the chandelier; a man in a priest's frock, under which his bare feet dangled limp and hideous.

As the unhappy Bianca slid from under my arm to the floor, I tiptoed forward and stared up into the face. It was the face of the priest Domenico, livid, distorted, grinning down at me. With a s.h.i.+ver I sprang past the corpse for a doorway facing me, that led still further into this unholy pavilion. The curtain before it had been wrenched away from the rings over the lintel--by the hand, no doubt, of the poor wretch as he had been haled to execution--since, save for a missing cord, the furniture of the room was undisturbed. The room beyond was bare, uncarpeted, and furnished like a workshop.

A solitary lamp burned low on a bracket, over a table littered with tools, and in the middle of the room stood a brazier, the coals in it yet glowing, with five or sick steel-handled implements left as they had been thrust into the heart of the fire. Were they, then, also torturers, these murderers?