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Chapter Eleven
The Secret Agent
A fat waiter conducted a well-dressed, lady-like girl up the great marble staircase of the Hôtel Brun, in Bologna, rapped lightly at the door of a private sitting-room, and ushered her in.
Angelo Borselli, who rose to meet her, bowed politely, with a smile on his sallow face, and welcomed his visitor.
She was about twenty-three, with very dark hair, fine big eyes, and a well-formed figure, rather stout, as are most of the Bolognese.
“I had given you up, signorina,” he said. “I have waited for you over an hour.”
“I could not get away before,” she replied somewhat timidly. “At home they seemed suspicious, and I had the greatest difficulty in coming here.” And she smiled, a faint flush suffusing her sunburnt cheeks.
“You came in a closed cab?”
“No, I went to the station and drove here in the hotel omnibus, as though I had arrived by train. I thought it would excite less suspicion.”
“Excellent!” laughed the Under-Secretary, glancing to see that the door was closed. “You are clever – always clever, Filoména. You will make a first-class agent of the Ministry some day,” he added approvingly.
She laughed as she seated herself in the chair he politely offered, and laid the little fan she carried upon the table, replying —
“I always do my best. But my mother watches so closely that I have to be most cautious.”
“You have done exceedingly well,” declared the schemer. “In this last affair you have rendered me the greatest assistance. Without you we should have failed. But I have invited you here to learn all the details. I was in Paris at the time, and all I have gathered is from the official reports of the court-martial. They did not call you up to Turin, I hope?”
“No. They took my evidence in secret at the barracks here.”
“And what did you tell them?”
“I described exactly what had happened. How the captain had a year ago declared his love for me, and how he came to Bologna from Paris.”
“And what else?”
“I described how I had received in confidence the mysterious packet from him, with instructions to hand it to a friend of his, a Frenchman, who would make an appointment to meet me. What I told the three officers who took down my statement seemed to create a great impression upon them.”
“Of course it would, because it is your statement that has condemned Solaro.”
“Condemned!” she gasped in blank surprise. “What, has he already been tried?”
“Yes, and dismissed the army.”
“But he is – ”
“There are no buts, signorina,” he quickly interrupted in a hard voice. “If you render secret service to the Ministry you must never reason as to the why or the wherefore. Always rest assured that we are acting solely for the benefit and safety of Italy.”
She thought deeply for a moment.
“When I met the Frenchman by appointment at a seat in the Montagnola garden, and gave him the packet, he broke it open, and I saw that some tracings were inside.”
“And what did the Frenchman say?” inquired Borselli. “Oh, he was very polite,” she laughed, blushing slightly. “We walked about the garden for nearly half an hour; for he was a pleasant man, who spoke Italian exceedingly well – evidently an officer.”
“Most of the men in the French secret service are recruited from the army or the detective police,” he remarked. “But I intend that Italy, like Russia, shall in future rely upon the shrewdness of clever women like yourself. This Frenchman said nothing regarding Solaro?”
“He merely remarked that he supposed the captain trusted me implicitly, and I, of course, replied in the affirmative. He wrote to me from the Hôtel National in Lucerne, making the appointment in the Montagnola, indicating a certain seat, which showed that he was well acquainted with Bologna.”
“Did he mention me?”
“No. He urged me, however, to deny all knowledge of the mysterious packet if taxed with receiving it. From that I concluded that he was in ignorance of how the whole affair had been arranged.”
“Of course,” he answered, with a laugh. “It would never do for France to learn our motives. We allow them to have the secrets of Tresenta because we have other ends in view. What they are you will know later.”
“And in the meantime Felice Solaro is dismissed the army in disgrace?”
The sallow-faced man nodded. He did not tell her that he had been sentenced to fifteen years’ imprisonment, for he knew how soft-hearted women are towards the innocent.
“Do you know,” she said presently, “I have a suspicion which I think I ought to tell you. It is that the address upon the envelope which contained the packet of papers was not in Captain Solaro’s own handwriting.”
He looked quickly into her face, frowning slightly and saying —
“Suspicions do not concern you, signorina. When I give you orders, it is for you first to execute them as secretly and expeditiously as possible, and secondly to have a care that your association with me is never discovered. You understand? I am merely Filipo Florena, shipping agent, of Genoa, and you write to me always to my office in the Via Balbi. Should you ever be in real peril, you have that code address by which a telegram will find me, either at home or abroad.”
She saw that her remark caused him annoyance, therefore she began to apologise and declare her readiness to serve the War Department of her country in every way possible.
“As I have already said,” he remarked in a quiet voice, obtaining her permission to smoke, “you have shown yourself in every way adapted to the responsible office I intend that you shall hold. You come of good family, although at present in straitened circumstances; you possess good looks, and you are a perfect model of all the virtues. Your mother, the widow of my old friend, Colonel Nodari, would, of course, object to the capacity in which you have once or twice served Italy. Yet it is for the honour and safety of your country, recollect. You are an agent of the Ministry of War, and being in its employ should act obediently, without expressing any surprise at the information you are asked to obtain, or attempting to deduct any logical conclusion.”
She sat silent, listening to the advice the schemer gave her. Her late father, a colonel of cavalry, had been the Under-Secretary’s friend, and the latter had been a frequent guest at their house. Indeed, she had known General Borselli ever since she had been a child, and of late, by clever ruses, this man had contrived to use her quick woman’s intelligence for his own ends. In recognition of her services, he had sent her small sums of money, which she found very useful for her dress bills, and on one or two occasions had sent her little trinkets, which she had locked up carefully from her mother’s prying eyes.
The Under-Secretary for War, far-seeing and deeply scheming always, recognised in her a very valuable assistant. She was known to the officers of a dozen garrisons, for she had been reared in the military atmosphere, therefore she was enabled to discover for him facts about persons that it would otherwise have been impossible for the Ministry to obtain.
A dozen times had she been successful in elucidating various sources of discontent, and gaining other information of greatest value to the War Office in Rome, information which Borselli used for his own ends and with the purpose of undermining the power of the Minister Camillo Morini. As the dead colonel’s daughter, and very popular on account of her bright disposition and good looks, she was the last person suspected of collecting that information which so mysteriously found its way to headquarters. And yet, under Borselli’s secret tuition, she had become as clever and ingenious an agent as any the Government employed.
Truth to tell, however, the part she had played in the Solaro affair, now that she realised how the unfortunate captain had been entrapped, caused her a deep pang of conscience. Several months before, in that very room, she had met the Under-Secretary by appointment, and he had, after some preliminaries, remarked upon her acquaintance with Captain Solaro, whereupon she blushingly explained that they had known each other for some years, ever since her father was in garrison on the frontier at Ventimiglia. He put some direct questions to her, and discovered that, although they corresponded frequently, she was in no way in love with him. Then he gave her instructions how to act, declaring that the captain was strongly suspected of secret dealing with a French agent, and that if she received a sealed packet by post from the Alpine garrison she was to hold it, and deal with it exactly in the manner which the captain ordered, but in the meantime she was also to communicate with the supposed shipping agent in the Via Balbi in Genoa – himself. In brief, she was to appear very friendly with the captain, inspire him with every confidence, and yet betray him into the hands of the authorities. To her, the suggestion was a very unwelcome one, but Borselli urged her to carry out the delicate negotiation from patriotic motives – as daughter of a brave soldier who had served Italy so faithfully and well in the struggles of the sixties. It was this claptrap appeal to her loyalty that had caused her to become a secret agent of the Under-Secretary, which had now resulted, she knew, in the disgrace of an innocent man.
Why had the trap been baited so cunningly? she wondered within herself. There was some hidden motive in the expulsion of Solaro from the army; what could it be? Surely that packet she had given the polite Frenchman had not really contained plans, for it was not likely that the War Office would actually connive at its own betrayal to France?
“I know that this recent little affair in the north has puzzled you, signorina,” the general remarked slowly, his eyes fixed upon her. “But you will see that we have right on our side one day. Act with care, exercise a wise discretion always, and you will not only be able to assist us, but you will, in future, receive a secret payment from the Ministry of seven thousand lire per annum, together with a fair allowance for expenses. The first payment has already been made to you in recognition of your tact towards Solaro,” he added, and taking from his wallet a slip of paper, he handed it to her, adding, “This is a draft on the Bank of Italy for the amount. Leave it in the bank if you wish – you will probably find it useful one day. You see it is upon the private account of Filipo Florena.”
She, wondering, held the draft between her fingers. It was the first she had ever seen, and she told him so.
“Put it away in your writing-desk or your jewel-case. And when you want it you can cash it on sight at any branch of the Bank of Italy – or, indeed, at any moneychanger’s.”
She folded it carefully, and slowly placed it in her purse, while he, glancing at her furtively and seeing that possession of such a sum had given her confidence, suddenly exclaimed —
“And now let me tell you the real reason why I am here.”
Chapter Twelve
Concerns some Curious Instructions
“Well?” she asked, as he paused and looked at her. “Why are you in Bologna?”
“I am here,” he answered, “for the purpose of sending you to England.”
“To England!” she echoed, half rising from her chair.
“Yes. You speak English quite well, therefore I have obtained for you a situation as governess in a highly respectable and wealthy family,” he said. “You remember you asked me a year ago to arrange that you might leave home and become your own mistress, for you told me you were tired of living on your mother’s narrow means.”
“But I – ”
“As I have already said, signorina,” he interrupted, “there are no buts where the safety of Italy is concerned. You are wanted to go to England for two reasons: the change will be beneficial to you, and you will render a service to the Ministry.”
“Then I am to accept the post with an ulterior object in view?” she remarked quickly.
“Of course,” he replied, with a smile. “There are certain matters of which we desire information, and it lies with you to supply it. You are well educated, a good linguist, and just the stamp of young lady who goes as governess in a wealthy family. Therefore, the post being vacant, I at once secured it for you by giving you a very strong recommendation.”
“I would rather remain in Italy,” the girl implored, recognising almost for the first time how entirely she was in that man’s hands.
“No,” he declared. “They expect you in England next week. The young lady, your pupil, is to begin her studies at once – while you will commence to study other matters on our behalf,” he added, his dark face relaxing into a meaning grin.
She was silent, twisting her handkerchief nervously in her gloved hand. She realised that so cleverly during the past three years had this man weaved a net about her she was now bound to obey him. But she had never dreamed that the services she rendered to the Ministry of War were to take her abroad – to England.
There, in Bologna, her status as the daughter of a colonel who had served with distinction and had died a commendatore gave her the entrée into what was a select circle of society for a provincial town, but strange perhaps to English ideas – a society composed mostly of needy counts and seedy countesses, marquises who lived in bare, half-furnished palaces upon the remnant of what past generations of gamblers and spendthrifts had left them, and government employees, together with the officers of the garrison. It was a degrading thing that she should go out as a governess, yet if it were really necessary, she must, she knew, bow to the inevitable.
At first she resisted his request, urging that it was impossible. She had only made the suggestion as a joke; she was ready to serve the Ministry of War at home in her own small way, but to go abroad, to become a secret agent of Italy in England, was quite another matter.
He smoked on in silence, standing at the window and pretending to be interested in the people passing in the street below.
“My dear signorina,” he exclaimed at last, turning his thin, unprepossessing face to her, and looking straight at her with his dark, crafty eyes, “I quite admit that to leave your home and friends is not a pleasant outlook. But you see it is imperative – absolutely imperative. You can render us most valuable assistance. Indeed, we are relying entirely upon you.”
“My mother will never consent to it,” she assured him.
“Leave the signora to me,” he laughed drily. “She will believe that you have become companion to an English lady. I will arrange it all. You know what entire confidence the signora has in me!”
Filoména smiled. This man, who held such a high office in the Ministry, had always been a friend of her family. Indeed, the colonel’s widow was greatly indebted to him, for, through him, the War Office now paid her a small sum annually in recognition of her late husband’s services to the kingdom, a payment which was not legal, but which had been ordered by Borselli and made law by decree of the Minister Morini himself.
“You will have a very pleasant time of it in England, I assure you,” he went on. “As governess you will, of course, be treated as an underling, but remain patient, watchful, and attentive always to your instructions. Remember that upon you depends much, that you may render greater service to Italy than even her ambassadors. Knowledge is power, is an old and trite saying – and knowledge is in no place more powerful than the Ministry of War.”
He treated her with a certain fatherly solicitude and confidence which impressed her. Four years ago, when she left the convent school at Ravenna and resumed the acquaintance formed in her childhood, he had gradually taken her into his confidence. He required certain information regarding certain officers in the Bologna garrison which with her woman’s subtle way of learning secrets she could obtain, while on his part he was ready to further her interests, to obtain that very necessary income for her mother – to act, in fact, as her friend, and to place her, in secret, under the protection of the Ministry of War. But secrecy was to be observed – secrecy in everything. To him alone was she to report, by letter or verbally. She was to act the spy on his behalf with cunning, care, and caution.
In the various tasks he had set her she had acquitted herself well, more especially in the mysterious affair of Captain Solaro, the man who, to his cost, had fallen in love with her. At heart she hated herself for the despicable part she had been compelled to play, yet she had become Borselli’s spy in order that she and her mother should receive that small but very necessary pension from the War Department.
In character she was one of those silent, watchful women whom nothing escapes, and who note every look and every gesture – one of the few women, indeed, who can keep a secret. Borselli, the man who used the Minister Morini as his cat’s-paw, and was as cunning an adventurer as there was in all the length of Italy, had recognised these qualities as those of a secret agent of the most successful type, and therefore had resolved to turn to account his ascendency over her.
She had taken up her little fan and was fanning herself with quick nervousness. The evening was a stifling one in September, for in that month Bologna, with its long streets of stucco porticos, is a veritable oven.
“The address of your new mistress is here,” remarked the Under-Secretary, producing a card from his pocket-book, whereon was written in pencil in an English hand: “Mrs Charles Fitzroy, 186, Brook Street, Grosvenor Square, W.”
“It is in the best and most fashionable part of London,” he added. “And they have a fine place out in the country. The child whom you are to teach is aged eight – a little friend of mine. So you see I have arranged it all for you. You have only to go there and commence your duties.”
She shrugged her shoulders. The idea of taking a situation as governess did not appeal to her. She would, indeed, have refused point-blank if she dared, only refusal might mean the cessation of her mother’s slender income.
She knew Angelo Borselli’s wife and son, and had visited them in Rome. The Signora Borselli was a stout woman of rather coarse type, proud of her position, fond of crude colours and a dazzling show. Her carriage in Rome was painted a bright grass green, and the livery of her servants was a blue-grey with yellow cockades. She dressed expensively, but without taste, as might be expected of one who was daughter of a straw hat manufacturer at Sancasciano. The son was aged eighteen, a superb young cub, who was now at the University of Ferrara studying law. Filoména Nodari was of gentle birth, and therefore despised the woman who had treated her so patronisingly. She looked upon Angelo Borselli as her dead father’s most devoted friend and her mother’s benefactor, but the wife of the Under-Secretary she held in disdain as an uncouth countrywoman aspiring to a great position – as indeed she really was.
“England is a long way off, signore,” she remarked in a blank voice, after a long pause, the silence being unbroken save for the strains of the military band playing outside in the piazzi, as it does every evening in summer. “Cannot you send someone else?” she begged.
“There is no one so well adapted as yourself,” he declared. “You know English and French, and could act the part of governess to perfection. I admit that to accept a menial office is not really pleasant, yet you must recollect that as a servant of the Ministry you are acting your part for the benefit of Italy – just as your poor father so valiantly acted his part through all his life.”
She sighed, and lapsed again into thought. Like a thousand other girls living at home upon slender means, she had often longed for a change of life and for sight of those foreign places about which she had read so much – and most of all of London. And here, he pointed out, was an opportunity of serving Italy abroad.
She believed all that he told her – how the information she furnished was necessary for the successful conduct of the Ministry in order to thwart the machinations of Italy’s enemies. She had no idea that her actions and inquiries, directed by him, were always with one end in view – to oust from office the Minister himself.
On the one hand, Filoména Nodari was extremely clever and far-seeing, a veritable genius in the discovery of secrets, while on the other she was as wax in the hands of this man whom for so many years she had regarded as her friend.
“Am I to write to this person, my employer?” she asked with a slight sigh, still holding the card in her hand.
“Only to announce the day and hour of your arrival in London – at the station of Charing Cross, remember. I told Mrs Fitzroy who and what you are – that you are tired of sleepy Bologna, that you were an officer’s daughter, and all the rest of it. Your wages are seven hundred francs a year, or twenty-four pounds in English money, with your railway fare paid to London, and your return fare if you don’t suit. But,” he added, with a meaning laugh, “you will suit, signorina – you must suit, recollect?”
She shrugged her shoulders dubiously, saying —
“Of course, if it is really necessary, I will go. But I fear I may fail.”
“Not if you are determined to succeed,” he assured her. “You have good looks, and they go such a very long way. That is why a pretty woman is so successful as a secret agent.”
She flushed slightly at his flattery.
“Well, and what am I to do? What information do you require?” she asked, speaking almost mechanically and gazing fixedly across the room.
“The facts, simply told, are these,” he said, tossing his cigarette into the ash-tray and halting before her. “This Mrs Fitzroy is the wife of a Mr Charles Fitzroy, a London fur merchant, and Alderman of the City, and sister to a man named Morgan-Mason, a member of the English House of Commons. This man you must watch. Recollect his name. Although he is a bachelor and lives in an apartment in Westminster, he spends much of his time at his sister’s house; hence you will have an opportunity of forming his acquaintance and keeping observation upon his movements. He is clever, crafty, and quite unscrupulous, therefore be cautious in all your movements. You must try and seize an opportunity to get a glimpse through his private papers if possible, and see if there are any documents in Italian of an unusual character.”
“Then you suspect him to be an enemy of Italy?” she remarked seriously.
“We suspect that this blatant, pompous orator, who is now gathering such a following in the House of Commons, is forming certain plans to undermine our strength, to turn English opinion against an Italian alliance. Therefore it is necessary that we should be in possession of all the details, and you alone can obtain knowledge of the truth. He does not know Italian, a fact which gives you distinct advantage. Watch him very carefully, and report each week to Genoa; while, on my part, if I have any important instructions to send, I shall address the letter to the Poste Restante at Charing Cross – which is opposite the railway station. Your aim must be to find out all you can; to discover with whom this man is in association in Italy, remembering that whatever secret information, or more especially any documentary evidence you can secure, will be of the utmost service to us. Go, my dear signorina,” he added, placing his hand upon her shoulder, “go to London, and carry with you my very best wishes for success.”
The woman sat silent, thinking over his instructions, while through the open window on the evening air came the strains of military music.
And as he watched her his thin, sallow face slowly relaxed into a sinister smile, when he reflected within himself the real reason why he was sending the pretty spy to England.
