Chapter Six
Concerns Three Capital A’s
The function in the library at Grosvenor Square on the following afternoon was, as may be supposed, a very sad and painful one.
Mabel Blair, dressed in deep mourning, her eyes betraying traces of tears, sat still and silent while the solicitor drily read over the will, clause by clause.
She made no comment, even when he repeated the dead man’s appointment of the unknown Italian to be manager of his daughter’s fortune.
“But who is he, pray?” demanded Mrs Percival, in her quiet, refined voice. “I have never heard Mr Blair speak of any such person.”
“Nor have I,” admitted Leighton, pausing a moment to readjust his glasses, and then continuing to read the document through to the end.
We were all thoroughly glad when the formality was over. Afterwards, Mabel whispered to me that she wished to see me alone in the morning-room, and when we had entered together and I had closed the door, she said —
“Last night I searched the small safe in my father’s bedroom where he sometimes kept his private papers and things. There were a quantity of my poor mother’s letters, written to him years ago when he was at sea, but nothing else, only this.” And she drew from her pocket a small, soiled and frayed playing-card, an ace of hearts, upon which certain cabalistic capitals had been written in three columns. In order that you shall properly understand the arrangement and position of the letters, it will perhaps be as well if I here reproduce it: —
“That’s curious!” I remarked, turning it over anxiously in my hand. “Have you tried to discover what meaning the words convey?”
“Yes; but it’s some cipher or other, I think. You will notice that the two upper columns commence with ‘A,’ and the lower column ends with the same letter. The card is the ace of hearts, and in all those points I detect some hidden meaning.”
“No doubt,” I said. “But was there an appearance of it being carefully preserved?”
“Yes, it was sealed in a linen-lined envelope to itself, and marked in my father’s handwriting, ‘Burton Blair – private.’ I wonder what it means?”
“Ah! I wonder,” I exclaimed, pondering deeply, and still gazing upon the three columns of fourteen letters. I tried to decipher it by the usual known methods of the easy cipher, but could make nothing intelligible of it. There were some hidden words there, and being utterly unintelligible, they caused me considerable thought. Why Blair had preserved that card in such secrecy was, to say the least, a mystery. In it I suspected there was some hidden clue to his secret, but of its nature I could not even guess.
When we had discussed it for a long time, arriving at no satisfactory conclusion, I suggested that she should go abroad with Mrs Percival for a few weeks so as to change her surroundings and endeavour to forget her sudden bereavement, but she only shook her head, murmuring —
“No, I prefer to remain here. The loss of my poor father would be the same to me abroad as it is here.”
“But you must endeavour to forget,” I urged with deep sympathy. “We are doing our utmost to solve the mystery surrounding your father’s actions, and the means by which he came by his death. To-night, indeed, I am leaving for Italy in order to make secret inquiries regarding this person who is appointed your secretary.”
“Ah, yes,” she sighed. “I wonder who he is? I wonder what motive my father could possibly have in placing my affairs in the hands of a stranger?”
“He is probably an old friend of your father’s,” I suggested.
“No,” she responded, “I knew all his friends. He had only one secret from me – the secret of the source of his wealth. That he always refused point-blank to tell me.”
“I shall travel direct to Florence, and discover what I can before the lawyers give this mysterious person notice of your father’s death,” I said. “I may obtain some knowledge which will be of the greatest benefit to us hereafter.”
“Ah! it is really very good of you, Mr Greenwood,” she answered, lifting her beautiful eyes to mine with an expression of profound gratitude. “I must admit that the idea of being closely associated with a stranger, and that stranger a foreigner, causes me considerable apprehension.”
“But he may be young and good-looking, the veritable Paolo of romance – and you his Francesca,” I suggested, smiling.
Her sweet lips relaxed slightly, but she shook her head, sighing as she answered —
“Please don’t anticipate anything of the kind. I only hope he may be old and very ugly.”
“So that he will not arouse my jealousy – eh?” I laughed. “Really, Mabel, if our friendship were not upon such a well-defined basis, I should allow myself to act the part of lover. You know I – ”
“Now don’t be foolish,” she interrupted, raising her small finger in mock reproval. “Remember what you said yesterday.”
“I said what I meant.”
“And so did I. To tell you the truth, I like to think of you as my big brother,” she declared. “I suppose I shall never love,” she added, reflectively, gazing into the blazing fire.
“No, no; don’t say that, Mabel. You’ll one day meet some man in your own station, love him, marry and be happy,” I said, my hand upon her shoulder. “Recollect that with your wealth you can secure the pick of the matrimonial market.”
“Some impoverished young aristocrat, you mean? No, thanks. I’ve already met a good many, but their disguise of affection has always been much too thin. Most of them wanted my money to pay off mortgages on their estates. No, I’d much prefer a poor man – although I shall never marry – never.”
I was silent for a moment, then I remarked quite bluntly —
“I always thought you would marry young Lord Newborough. You both seemed very good friends.”
“So we were – until he proposed to me.”
And she looked me straight in the face with that clear gaze and those splendid eyes wide open in wonderment, almost like a child’s.
Her character was a strangely complex one. As a tall, willowy girl, in those early days of our acquaintance, I knew her to be high-minded and wilful, yet of that sweet affectionate disposition that endeared her to every one with whom she came into contact. Her nature was so calm and so sweet that in her love seemed an unconscious impulse. I had often thought she was surely too soft, too good, too fair to be cast among the briers of the world, and fall and bleed upon the thorns of life. The world is just as cold and pitiless and just as full of pitfalls for the young and unwary in Mayfair as in Mile End. Hence, to fulfil my promise to that man now silent in his grave, it was my duty to protect her from the thousand and one wiles of those who would endeavour to profit by sex and inexperience.
Her early privations, her hard life in youth while her father was absent at sea, and those weary months of tramping the turnpikes of England, all had had their effect upon her. With her, love seemed to be scarcely a passion or a sentiment, but a dreamy enchantment, a reverie which a fairy spell dissolved or riveted at pleasure. So exquisitely delicate was her character, just as was her countenance, that it seemed as if a touch would profane it. Like a strain of sad, sweet music which comes floating by on the wings of night and silence, and which we rather feel than hear, like the exhalation of the violet dying even upon the sense it charms, like the snow-flake dissolved in air before it has caught a stain of earth, like the light surf severed from the billow which a breath disperses – such was her nature, so full of that modesty, grace and tenderness without which a woman is no woman.
As she stood there before me, a frail, delicate figure in her plain black gown, and her hand in mine, thanking me for the investigation which I was undertaking in her behalf, and wishing me bon voyage, I shuddered to think of her thrown alone amid harsh and adverse destinies, and amid all the corruptions and sharks of society, perhaps without energy to resist, or will to act, or strength to endure. Alone in such a case, the end must inevitably be desolation.
I wished her farewell, turning from her with a feeling that, loving her as I admit I did, I was nevertheless unworthy of her. Yet surely I was playing a dangerous game!
I had entertained a strong and increasing affection for her ever since that winter’s night down at Helpstone. Still, now that she was possessor of vast wealth, I felt that the difference in our ages and the fact that I was a poor man were both barriers to our marriage. Indeed, she had never exerted any of the feminine wiles of flirtation towards me; she had never once allowed me to think that I had captivated her. She had spoken the truth. She regarded me as an elder brother – that was all.
That same night, as I paced the deck of the Channel steamer in the teeth of a wintry gale, watching the revolving light of Calais harbour growing more and more distinct, my thoughts were full of her. Love is the teacher, grief the tamer, and time the healer of the human heart. While the engines throbbed, the wind howled and the dark seas swirled past, I paced up and down puzzling over the playing-card in my pocket and reflecting upon all that had occurred. The rich fancies of unbowed youth, the visions of long-perished hopes, the shadows of unborn joys, the gay colourings of the dawn of existence – what ever my memory had treasured up, came before me in review, but lived no longer within my heart.
I recollected that truism of Rochefoucauld’s: “Il est difficile de definer l’amour: ce qu’on en peut dire est que, dans l’ame, c’est un passion de regner; dans les esprits, c’est une sympathie; et dans le corps, ce n’est qu’une envie cachée et delicate de posséder ce que l’on aime, après beaucoup de mystères.” Yes, I loved her with all my heart, with all my soul, but to me I recognised that it was not permitted. My duty, the duty I had promised to fulfil to that dying man whose life-story had been a secret romance, was to act as Mabel’s protector, and not to become her lover and thus profit by her wealth. Blair had left his secret to me, in order, no doubt, to place me beyond the necessity of fortune-hunting, and as it had been lost it was my duty to him and to myself to spare no effort to recover it.
With these sentiments firmly established within my heart I entered the wagon-lit at Calais, and started on the first stage of my journey across Europe from the Channel to the Mediterranean.
Three days later I was strolling up the Via Tornabuoni, in Florence, that thoroughfare of mediaeval palaces, banks, consulates and chemists’ shops that had been so familiar to me each winter, until I had taken to hunting in England in preference to the sunshine of the Lung’ Arno and the Cascine. Indeed, some of my early years had been spent in Italy, and I had grown to love it, as every Englishman does. In that bright February morning as I passed up the long, crooked street, filled by the nonchalant Florentines and the wealthy foreigners out for an airing, I passed many men and women of my acquaintance. Doney’s and Giacosa’s, the favourite lounges of the men, were agog with rich idlers sipping cocktails or that seductive petit verre known in the Via Tornabuoni as a piccolo, the baskets of the flower-sellers gave a welcome touch of colour to the grim grey of the colossal Palace of the Strozzi, while from the consulates the flags of various nations, most conspicuous of all being that of the ever-popular “Major,” reminded me that it was the festà of Santa Margherita.
In the old days, when I used to live en pension with a couple of Italian artillery officers and a Dutch art-student in the top floor of one of those great old palaces in the Via dei Banchi, the Via Tornabuoni used to be my morning walk, for there one meets everybody, the ladies shopping or going to the libraries, and the men gossiping on the kerb – a habit quickly acquired by every Englishman who takes up his abode in Italy.
It was astonishing, too, what a crowd of well-known faces I passed that morning – English peers and peeresses, Members of Parliament, financial magnates, City sharks, manufacturers, and tourists of every grade and of every nation.
His Highness the Count of Turin, returning from drill, rode by laughing with his aide-de-camp and saluting those he knew. The women mostly wore their smartest toilettes with fur, because a cold wind came up from the Arno, the scent of flowers was in the air, bright laughter and incessant chatter sounded everywhere, and the red-roofed old Lily City was alive with gaiety. Perhaps no city in all the world is so full of charm nor so full of contrasts as quaint old Florence, with her wonderful cathedral, her antique bridge with rows of jewellers’ shops upon it, her magnificent churches, her ponderous palaces, and her dark, silent, mediaeval streets, little changed, some of them, since the days when they were trodden by Giotto and by Dante. Time has laid his hand lightly indeed upon the City of Flowers, but whenever he has done so he has altered it out of all recognition, and the garish modernity of certain streets and piazzas surely grates to-day upon those who, like myself, knew the old city before the Piazza Vittorio – always the Piazza Vittorio, synonym of vandalism – had been constructed, and the old Ghetto, picturesque if unclean, was still in existence.
Two men, both of them Italian, stopped to salute me as I walked, and to wish me ben tornato. One was an advocate whose wife was accredited one of the prettiest women in that city where, strangely enough, the most striking type of beauty is fair-haired. The other was the Cavaliere Alinari, secretary to the British Consul-General, or the “Major,” as everybody speaks of him.
I had only arrived in Florence two hours before, and, after a wash at the Savoy, had gone forth with the object of cashing a cheque at French’s, prior to commencing my inquiries.
Meeting Alinari, however, caused me to halt for a moment, and after he had expressed pleasure at my return, I asked —
“Do you, by any chance, happen to know any one by the name of Melandrini – Paolo Melandrini? His address is given me as Via San Cristofano, number eight.”
He looked at me rather strangely with his sharp eyes, stroked his dark beard a moment, and replied in English, with a slight accent —
“The address does not sound very inviting, Mr Greenwood. I have not the pleasure of knowing the gentleman, but the Via San Cristofano is one of the poorest and worst streets in Florence, just behind Santa Croce from the Via Ghibellina. I should not advise you to enter that quarter at night. There are some very bad characters there.”
“Well,” I explained, “the fact is I have come down here expressly to ascertain some facts concerning this person.”
“Then don’t do it yourself,” was my friend’s strong advice. “Employ some one who is a Florentine. If it is a case of confidential inquiries, he will certainly be much more successful than you can ever be. The moment you set foot in that street it would be known in every tenement that an Inglese was asking questions. And,” he added with a meaning smile, “they resent questions being asked in the Via San Cristofano.”
Chapter Seven
The Mysterious Foreigner
I felt that his advice was good, and in further conversation over a piccolo at Giacosa’s he suggested that I should employ a very shrewd but ugly little old man named Carlini, who sometimes made confidential inquiries on behalf of the Consulate.
An hour later the old man called at the Savoy, a bent, shuffling, white-headed old fellow, shabbily dressed, with a grey soft felt rather greasy hat stuck jauntily on the side of his head – a typical Florentine of the people. They called him “Babbo Carlini” in the markets, I afterwards learned, and cooks and servant-girls were fond of playing pranks upon him. Believed by every one to be a little childish, he fostered the idea because it gave him greater facilities in his secret inquiries, for he was regularly employed by the police in serious cases, and through his shrewdness many a criminal had been brought to justice.
In the privacy of my bedroom I explained in Italian the mission I wished him to execute for me.
“Si, signore,” was all he responded, and this at every pause I made.
His boots were sadly cracked and down at heel, and he was badly in want of clean linen, but from his handkerchief pocket there arose a small row of “toscani,” those long, thin, penny cigars so dear to the Italian palate.
“Recollect,” I impressed upon the old fellow, “you must, if possible, find a way of striking up an acquaintance with this individual, Paolo Melandrini, obtain from him all you can about himself, and arrange so that I have, as soon as possible, an opportunity of seeing him without being myself observed. This matter,” I added, “is strictly confidential, and I engage you for one week in my service at a wage of two hundred and fifty lire. Here are one hundred to pay your current expenses.”
He took the green banknotes in his claw-like hand, and with a muttered “Tanti grazie, signore,” transferred it to the inner pocket of his shabby jacket.
“You must on no account allow the man to suspect that any inquiry is being made concerning him. Mind that he knows nothing of any Englishman in Florence asking about him, or it will arouse his suspicions at once. Be very careful in all that you say and do, and report to me to-night. At what time shall I meet you?”
“Late,” the old fellow grunted. “He may be a working-man, and if so I shall not be able to see anything of him till evening. I’ll call here at eleven o’clock to-night,” and then he shuffled out, leaving an odour of stale garlic and strong tobacco.
I began to wonder what the hotel people would think of me entertaining such a visitor, for the Savoy is one of the smartest in Florence, but my apprehensions were quickly dispelled, for as we passed out I heard the uniformed hall-porter exclaim in Italian —
“Hulloa, Babbo! Got a fresh job?”
To which the old fellow only grinned in satisfaction, and with another grunt passed out into the sunshine.
That day passed long and anxiously. I idled on the Ponte Vecchio and in the dim religious gloom of the Santissima Anunziata, in the afternoon making several calls upon friends I had known, and in the evening dining at Doney’s in preference to the crowded table-d’hôte of English and Americans at the Savoy.
At eleven I awaited old Carlini in the hall of the hotel, and on his arrival took him anxiously in the lift up to my room.
“Well,” he commenced, speaking in his slightly-lisping Florentine tongue, “I have been pursuing inquiries all day, but have discovered very little. The individual you require appears to be a mystery.”
“I expected so,” was my reply. “What have you discovered regarding him?”
“They know him in Via San Cristofano. He has a small apartment on the third floor of number eight, which he only visits occasionally. The place is looked after by an old woman of eighty, whom I managed to question. Discovering that this Melandrini was absent and that a cloth was hanging from the window to dry, I presented myself as an agent of police to explain that the hanging out of a cloth was a contravention of the law and liable to a fine of two francs. I then obtained from her a few facts concerning her padrone. She told me all she knew, which did not amount to much. He had a habit of arriving suddenly, generally at evening, and staying there for one or two days, never emerging in the daytime. Where he lived at other times she did not know. Letters often came for him bearing an English stamp, and she kept them. Indeed, she showed me one that arrived ten days ago and is now awaiting him.”
Could it be from Blair, I wondered?
“What was the character of the handwriting on the envelope?” I inquired.
“An English hand – thick and heavy. Signore was spelt wrongly, I noticed.”
Blair’s hand was thick, for he generally wrote with a quill. I longed to examine it for myself.
“Then this old serving-woman has no idea of the individual’s address?”
“None whatever. He told her that if any one ever called for him to say that his movements are uncertain, and that any message must be left in writing.”
“What is the place like?”
“Poorly furnished, and very dirty and neglected. The old woman is nearly blind and very feeble.”
“Does she describe him as a gentleman?”
“I could not ask her for his description, but from inquiries in other quarters I learned that he was in all probability a person who was in trouble with the police, or something of that sort. A man who kept a wine-shop at the end of the street told me in confidence that about six months before, two men, evidently agents of police, had been very active in their inquiries concerning him. They had set a watch upon the house for a month, but he had not returned. He described him as, a middle-aged man with a beard, who was very reticent, who wore glasses, spoke with just a slight foreign accent, and who seldom entered any wine-shop and who scarcely ever passed the time of day with his neighbours. Yet he was evidently well off, for on several occasions, on hearing of distress among the families living in that street, he had surreptitiously visited them and dispensed charity to a no mean degree. Apparently it is this which has inspired respect, while, in addition, he seems to have purposely surrounded his identity by mystery.”
“With some object, no doubt,” I remarked.
“Certainly,” was the queer old man’s response. “All my inquiries tend to show he is a man of secrecy and that he is concealing his real identity.”
“It may be that he keeps those rooms merely as an address for letters,” I suggested.
“Do you know, signore, that is my own opinion?” he said. “He may live in another part of Florence for aught we know.”
“We must find out. Before I leave here it is imperative that I should know all about him, therefore I will assist you to watch for his return.”
Babbo shook his head and fingered his long cigar, which he was longing to smoke.
“No, signore. You must not appear in the Via San Cristofana. They would note your presence instantly. Leave all to me. I will employ an assistant, and we shall, I hope, before long be shadowing this mysterious individual.”
Recollecting that strange letter in Italian which I had secured from the dead man’s effects, I asked the old fellow if he knew any place called San Frediano – the place appointed for the meeting between the man now dead and the writer of the letter.
“Certainly,” was his reply. “There is the market of San Frediano behind the Carmine. And, of course, there is the Church of San Frediano in Lucca.”
“In Lucca!” I echoed. “Ah, but it is not Florence.”
Nevertheless, now I recollected, the letter distinctly appointed the hour of meeting “at vespers.” The place arranged was therefore most certainly a church.
“Do you know of any other Church of San Frediano?” I inquired.
“Only the one in Lucca.”
It was evident, then, that the meeting was to take place there on the 6th of March. If I did not ascertain any further facts concerning Paolo Melandrini in the meantime, I resolved to keep the appointment and watch who should be present.
I gave Carlini permission to smoke, and, seated in a low easy-chair, the old fellow soon filled my room with the strong fumes of his cheap cigar, at the same time relating to me in narrow details all that he had gathered in that Florentine slum.
The secret connexion between Burton Blair and this mysterious Italian was a problem I could not solve. There was evidently some strong motive why he should appoint him controller of Mabel’s fortune, yet it was all an utter enigma, just as much as the mysterious source from which the millionaire had obtained his vast wealth.
Whatever we discovered I knew that it must be some strange revelation. From the first moment I had met the wayfarer and his daughter, they had been surrounded by striking romance, which had now deepened, and become more inexplicable by the death of that bluff, hearty man with a secret.
I could not help strongly suspecting that the man Melandrini, whose movements were so mysterious and suspicious, had had some hand in filching from Blair that curious little possession of his which he had, in his will, bequeathed to my keeping. This was a strange fancy of mine, and one which, try how I would, I could not put aside. So erratic seemed the man’s movements that, for aught I knew, he might have been in England at the time of Blair’s death – if so, then the suspicion against him was gravely increased.
I was feverishly anxious to return to London, but unable yet to do so ere my inquiries were completed. A whole week went by, and Carlini, employing his son-in-law, a dark-haired young man of low class, as his assistant, kept vigilant watch upon the house both night and day, but to no avail. Paolo Melandrini did not appear to claim the letter from England that was awaiting him.
One evening by judiciously bribing the old servant with twenty francs, Carlini obtained the letter in question, and brought it for me to see. In the privacy of my room we boiled a kettle, steamed the flap of the envelope, and took out the sheet of notepaper it contained.
It was from Blair. Dated from Grosvenor Square eighteen days before, it was in English, and read as follows: —
“I will meet you if you really wish it. I will bring out the papers with me and trust in you to employ persons who know how to keep their mouths shut. My address in reply will be Mr John Marshall, Grand Hotel, Birmingham.
“B.B.”
The mystery increased. Why did Blair wish for the employment of persons who would remain silent? What was the nature of the work that was so very confidential?
Evidently Blair took every precaution in receiving communications from the Italian, causing him to address his letters in various names to various hotels whither he went to stay a night, and thus claim them.
Mabel had often told me of her father’s frequent absences from home, he sometimes being away a week or fortnight, or even three weeks, without leaving his address behind. His erratic movements were now accounted for.
Consumed by anxiety I waited day after day, spending hours on that maddening cipher on the playing-card, until, on the morning of the 6th of March, Carlini having been unsuccessful in Florence, I took him with me up to the old city of Lucca, which, travelling by way of Pistoja, we reached about two o’clock in the afternoon.
At the Universo I was given that enormous bedroom with the wonderful frescoes which was for so long occupied by Ruskin, and just before the Ave Maria clanged away over the hills and plains, I parted from Babbo and strolled tourist-wise into the magnificent old mediaeval church, the darkness of which was illuminated only by the candles burning at the side altars and the cluster before the statue of Our Lady.
Vespers were in progress, and the deathlike stillness of the great interior was only broken by the low murmuring of the bowed priest.
Only about a dozen persons were present, all of them being women – all save one, a man who, standing back in the shadow behind one of the huge circular columns, was waiting there in patience, while of the others all were kneeling.
Turning suddenly on hearing my light footstep upon the marble flags, I met him next second face to face.
I drew a quick breath, then stood rooted to the spot in blank and utter amazement.
The mystery was far greater than even I had imagined it to be. The truth that dawned upon me was staggering and utterly bewildering.