Table of Contents
Martin Fawley glanced irritably at the man stretched flat in the chair he coveted—the man whose cheeks were partly concealed by lather and whose mass of dark hair was wildly disarranged. One of his hands—delicate white hands they were, although the fingers were long and forceful—reposed in a silver bowl of hot water. The other one was being treated by the manicurist seated on a stool by his side, the young woman whose services Fawley also coveted. He had entered the establishment a little abruptly and he stood with his watch in his hand. Even Fawley’s friends did not claim for him that he was a good-tempered person.
“Monsieur is ten minutes en retard,” the coiffeur announced with a reproachful gesture.
“Nearly a quarter of an hour,” the manicurist echoed with a sigh.
The newcomer replaced his watch. The two statements were incontrovertible. Nevertheless, the ill-humour which he felt was eloquently reflected in his face. The man in the chair looked at him expressionless, indifferent. The inconvenience of a stranger meant nothing to him.
“If Monsieur will seat himself,” Henri, the coiffeur, suggested, “this will not be a long affair.”
Fawley glanced once more at his watch. He really had nothing whatever to do at the moment but he possessed all the impatience of the man of energy at being asked to wait at any time. While he seemed to be considering the situation, the man in the chair spoke. His French was good enough but it was not the French of a native.
“It would be a pity,” he said, “that Monsieur should be misled. I require ensuite a face massage and I am not satisfied with the hand which Mademoiselle thinks she has finished. Furthermore, there is the trimming of my eyebrows—a delicate task which needs great care.”
Martin Fawley stared at the speaker rudely.
“So you mean to spend the morning here,” he observed.
The man in the chair glanced at Fawley nonchalantly and remained silent. Fawley turned his back upon him, upon Henri and Mathilde, the white-painted furniture, the glittering mirrors, and walked out into the street…He did not see again this man to whom he had taken so unreasonable a dislike until he was ushered with much ceremony, a few days later, into his very magnificent official apartment in the Plaza Margaretta at Rome.
General Berati looked at his visitor, as he motioned to a chair, with very much the same stony indifference with which he had regarded him in the barber’s shop at Nice. Their eyes met and they exchanged one long, calculating glance. Fawley felt the spell of the man from that moment. Often afterwards he wondered why he had not felt it, even when he had seen him with his face half covered with lather and his fingers plunged into the silver bowl.
“You have come direct from Paris?” Berati asked.
“Those were my instructions. I was at your Embassy on Thursday afternoon. I caught the Rome express at seven o’clock.”
“You have an earnest sponsor in Paris?”
“Carlo Antonelli. I have worked with him.”
“So I understand. Why are you not working for your own country?”
“There are half a dozen more of us Americans to whom you might address that question,” Fawley explained. “The department to which I belong has been completely disbanded. M.I.B.C. exists no longer.”
“You mean,” Berati asked, with a keen glance from under his bushy black eyebrows, “that your country has no longer a Secret Service?”
“It amounts to that,” Fawley admitted. “Our present-day politicians believe that all information acquired through Secret Service work is untrustworthy and dangerous. They have adopted new methods.”
“So you are willing to work for another country?”
“Provided,” Fawley stipulated, “I am assured that the work does not conflict directly with American or British interests.”
“The Americans,” Berati observed quietly, “are the only people who have no idea what their real interests are.”
“In what respect?”
The Italian shrugged his shoulders very slightly.
“America,” he said, “needs the information which Secret Service agents could afford them as much or more than any nation in the world. However, you need have no fear nor need you think that you are the only foreigner who is working for us. You will probably become acquainted before your work is over with a German, a Monegasque and a Dane. I am not a believer in using one’s own country-people exclusively.”
“You strip our profession of its honourable side,” Fawley remarked drily. “That does not refer to myself. I am admittedly a free lance. I must have work of an adventurous type, and since my country cannot offer it to me, I must seek for it in any decent way.”
“Patriotism,” Berati sneered, “has been the excuse far many a career of deceit.”
“It has also been its justification,” Fawley ventured.
Berati’s expression did not change an iota, yet somehow his visitor was made to feel that he was not accustomed to argument.
“The present work is worth while for its own sake,” he announced. “It is so dangerous that you might easily lose your life within a fortnight. That is why I shall give you your work chapter by chapter. To-day I propose only to hand you your credentials—which, by the by, will mean sudden death to you if ever they are found by the wrong people upon your person—and explain the commencement of your task.”
Berati touched a concealed bell embedded in the top of his desk. Almost immediately, through a door which Fawley had not previously noticed, a young man entered, noiseless and swift in his movements and of intriguing personality. His head was shaven like the head of a monk, his complexion was almost ivory white, unrelieved by the slightest tinge of colour. His fingers were bony. His frame was thin. The few words he addressed to his Chief were spoken in so low a tone that, although Fawley’s hearing was good and Italian the same to him as most other languages, he heard nothing. To his surprise, Berati introduced the newcomer.
“This is my secretary, Prince Patoni,” he said. “Major Fawley.”
The young man bowed and held out his hand. Fawley found it, as he had expected, as cold as ice.
“Major Fawley’s work was well known to us years ago,” he remarked a little grimly. “As a confrère he will be welcome.”
Almost immediately, in obedience to a gesture from Berati, he departed leaving behind him a sense of unreality, as though he were some phantom flitting across the stage of life rather than a real human being. But then indeed, on that first day, Berati himself seemed unreal to his visitor. The former tore open one of the packages the secretary had brought and tossed its contents across the table.
“Open that,” he directed.
Fawley obeyed. Inside was a plain platinum and gold cigarette case with six cigarettes on either side, neatly kept in place by a platinum clasp.
“Well?” Berati demanded.
“Is that a challenge?” Fawley asked.
“You may accept it as such.”
Fawley held the case with its diagonal corners between two fingers and ran the forefinger of his other hand back and forth over the hinges. Almost instantaneously a third division of the case disclosed itself. Berati’s expression remained unchanged but his eyebrows were slowly and slightly elevated.
“There are three of you alive then,” he remarked coolly. “I thought that there were now only two.”
“You happen to be right,” his visitor told him. “Joseffi died very suddenly.”
“When?”
“The day after he opened the case.”
Berati, who indulged very seldom in gestures, touched his underlip with his long firm forefinger.
“Yet—you came.”
Fawley smiled—perhaps a little sardonically.
“The men who work for you, General,” he observed, “should rid themselves of any fear of death.”
Berati nodded very slowly and very thoughtfully. He seemed to be appraising the man who stood on the other side of his desk.
“It appears to me,” he admitted, “that we may get on.”
“It is possible,” Fawley agreed. “Curiosity prompts me to ask you one question, however. When you sent for me, had you any idea that we had met in that barber’s shop at Nice?”
“I knew it perfectly well.”
“I confess that that puzzles me a little,” Fawley admitted. “I was at my worst that day. I did not show the self-control of a schoolboy. I had not even the excuse of being in a hurry. I was annoyed because you had taken my place and I showed it.”
Berati smiled.
“It was the very fact,” he pronounced, “that you were able to forget your profession on an ordinary occasion which commended you to me. Our own men—most of them, at any rate—err on the side of being too stealthy. They are too obvious in their subterfuges ever to reach the summits. You have the art—or shall I call it the genius?—of being able to display your natural feelings when you are, so to speak, in mufti. You impressed me, as you would any man, with the idea that you were a somewhat choleric, somewhat crude Englishman or American, thinking, as usual, that the better half of any deal should fall to you. I made up my mind that if you were free you were my man.”
“You had the advantage of me,” Fawley reflected.
“I never forget a face,” the other confided. “You were in Rome five years ago—some important mission—but I could recall it if I chose… To proceed. You know where to look for your identification papers if it should become necessary to show them. Your supplementary passports are in the same place—both diplomatic and social.”
“Passports,” Fawley remarked, as he disposed of the cigarette case in the inner pocket of his waistcoat, “generally indicate a journey.”
Berati’s long fingers played for a moment with the stiff collar of his uniform. He looked meaningly across his table.
“Adventure is to be found in so many of these southern cities,” he observed. “Monte Carlo is very pleasant at this time of the year and the France is an excellent hotel. A countryman of ours, I remind myself, is in charge there. There is also a German named Krust—but that will do later. Our relations with him are at present undetermined. Your first centre of activities will be within twenty kilometres of the Casino. A rivederci, Signor.”
He held out his hand. Fawley took it, but lingered for a moment.
“My instructions—” he began.
“They will arrive,” the Italian interrupted. “Have no anxiety. There will be plenty of work for you. You will begin where Joseffi left off. I wish you better fortune.”
Fawley obeyed the little wave of the hand and took his leave. In doing so, however, he made a not incomprehensible error. The room was irregular in shape, with panelled walls, and every one of the oval recesses possessed a door which matched its neighbour. His fingers closed upon the handle of the one through which he believed that he had entered. Almost at once Berati’s voice snapped out from behind him like a pistol shot.
“Not that one! The next to your right.”
Fawley did not, however, at once withdraw his hand from the beautiful piece of brass ornamentation upon which it rested.
“Where does this one lead to?” he asked with apparent irrelevance.
Berati’s voice was suddenly harsh.
“My own apartments—the Palazzo Berati. Be so good as to pass out by the adjoining door.”
Fawley remained motionless. Berati’s voice was coldly angry.
“There is perhaps some explanation—” he began ominously.
“Explanation enough,” Fawley interrupted. “Some one is holding the handle of this door on the other side. They are even now matching the strength of their fingers against mine.”
“You mean that some one is attempting to enter?”
“Obviously,” Fawley replied. “Shall I let them in?”
“In ten seconds,” Berati directed. “Count ten to yourself and then open the door.”
Fawley obeyed his new Chief literally and it was probably that instinct of self-preservation which had always been helpfully present with him in times of crisis which saved his life. He sprang to one side, sheltering himself behind the partially opened door. A bullet whistled past his ear, so that for hours afterwards he felt a singing there, as though a hot wind was stabbing at him. There was a crash from behind him in the room. Berati’s chair was empty! Down the passage was dimly visible the figure of a woman, whose feet seemed scarcely to touch the polished oak floor. Fawley was barely in time, for she had almost reached the far end before he started in pursuit. He called out to her, hoping that she would turn her head and allow him a glimpse of her face, but she was too clever for any gaucherie of that sort. He passed through a little unseen cloud of faint indefinite perfume, such as might float from a woman’s handkerchief shaken in the dark, stooped in his running to pick up and thrust a glittering trifle into his pocket, and almost reached her before she disappeared through some thickly hanging brocaded curtains. It was only a matter of seconds before Fawley flung them on one side in pursuit and emerged into a large square anteroom with shabby magnificent hangings, but with several wonderful pictures on the walls and two closed doors on either side. He paused to listen but all that he could hear was the soft sobbing of stringed instruments in the distance and a murmur of many voices, apparently from the reception rooms of the palazzo. He looked doubtfully at the doors. They had the air of not having been opened for generations. The only signs of human life came from the corridor straight ahead which obviously led into the reception rooms. Fawley hesitated only for a moment, then he made his way cautiously along it until he arrived at a slight bend and a further barrier of black curtains—curtains of some heavy material which looked like velvet—emblazoned in faded gold with the arms of a famous family…He paused once more and listened. At that moment the music ceased. From the storm of applause he gathered that there must have been at least several hundred people quite close to him on the other side of the curtain. He hesitated, frowning. Notwithstanding his eagerness to track down the would-be assassin, it seemed hopeless to make his way amongst a throng of strangers, however ingenious the explanations he might offer, in search of a woman whose face he had scarcely seen and whom he could recognise only by the colour of her gown. Reluctantly he retraced his steps and stood once more in the anteroom which, like many apartments in the great Roman palaces which he had visited, seemed somehow to have lost its sense of habitation and to carry with it a suggestion of disuse. There were the two doors. He looked at them doubtfully. Suddenly one was softly opened and a woman stood looking out at him with a half-curious, half-frightened expression in her brown eyes. She was wearing a dress the colour of which reminded him of the lemon groves around Sorrento.
An angry and a frightened woman! Fawley had seen many of them before in his life but never one quite of this type. Her eyes, which should have been beautiful, were blazing. Her lips—gashes of scarlet fury—seemed as if they were on the point of withering him with a storm of words. Yet when she spoke, she spoke with reserve, without subtlety, a plain, blunt question.
“Why are you following me about?”
“Scarcely that,” he protested. “I am keeping you under observation for a time.”
“Like all you Anglo-Saxons, you are a liar and an impudent one,” she spat out…“Wait!”
Her tone had suddenly changed to one of alarm. Instinctively he followed her lead and listened. More and more distinctly he could hear detached voices at the end of the corridor which led into the reception rooms. The curtains must have been drawn to one side, for the hum of conversation became much louder. She caught at his wrist.
“Follow me,” she ordered.
They passed into a darkened entresol. She flung open an inner door and Fawley found himself in a bedroom—a woman’s bedroom—high-ceilinged, austere after the Italian fashion, but with exquisite linen and lace upon the old four-postered bed, and with a shrine in one corner, its old gilt work beautifully fashioned—a representation of the Madonna—a strangely moving work of art. She locked the door with a ponderous key.
“Is that necessary?” Fawley asked.
She scoffed at him. The fury had faded from her face and Fawley, in an impersonal sort of way, was beginning to realise how beautiful she was.
“Do not think that I am afraid,” she said coldly. “I have done that to protect myself. If you refuse to give me what I ask for, I shall shoot you and point to the locked door as my excuse. You followed me in. There can be no denying that.”
She was passionately in earnest, but a sense of humour which had befriended Fawley in many grimmer moments chose inappropriately enough to assert itself just then. With all her determination, it was obvious that her courage was a matter of nerve, that having once keyed herself up to a desperate action she was near enough now to collapse. Probably that made her the more dangerous, but Fawley did not stop to reflect. He leaned against the high-backed chair and laughed quietly…Afterwards he realised that he was in as great danger of his life in those few seconds as at any time during his adventurous career. But after that first flash of renewed fury something responsive, or at any rate sympathetic, seemed to creep into her face and showed itself suddenly in the quivering of her lips. Her fingers, which had been creeping towards the bosom of her dress, retreated empty.
“Tell me what it is that you want from me,” Fawley asked.
“You know,” she answered. “I want my slipper.”
He felt in his pocket and knew at once that his first suspicion had been correct. He shook his head gravely.
“Alas,” he replied, “I am forced to keep this little memento of your expedition for the present. As to what happened a few minutes ago—”
“Well, what are you going to do about that?” she interrupted. “I deny nothing. I tried to kill Berati. But for the fact that you unnerved me—I did not expect to find any one holding the door on the other side—I should have done it. As it is, I fear that he has escaped.”
“What did you want to kill the General for?” Fawley asked curiously. “You are both Italian, are you not, and Berati is at least a patriot?”
“Take my advice,” she answered, “and do not try to interfere in matters of which you know nothing.”
“That seems a little hard on me,” Fawley protested, with a smile. “I have been knocking about Europe for a reasonable number of years and I should say that no man had worked harder for his country than Berati.”
“Nevertheless,” she rejoined, “he is on the point of making a hideous blunder. If you had known as much as I do, you would have stepped back and let me kill him.”
“I am not in favour of murder as an argument,” Fawley objected.
“You think too much of human life, you Americans,” she scoffed.
“In any case, Berati has done a great deal for Italy,” he reminded her.
“There are some who think otherwise,” she answered.
She listened for another moment, then she moved to the door and turned the key. She swung around and faced Fawley. The anger had all gone. Her eyes had softened. There was a note almost of pleading in her tone.
“There shall be no more melodrama,” she promised. “I want what you picked up of mine. It is necessary that I go back to the reception of the Principessa.”
“I am not detaining you,” Fawley ventured to remind her hopefully.
“Do you suggest then,” she asked, with a faint uplifting of her delicate eyebrows, “that I make my appearance in that crowded room with but one shoe on?”
“This being apparently your bedchamber,” Fawley replied, looking around, “it occurs to me as possible that you might find another pair.”
“Nothing that would go with the peculiar shade of my frock and these stockings,” she assured him, lifting her skirt a few inches and showing him her exquisitely sheened ankles.
Fawley sighed.
“Alas,” he regretted, “an hour ago I was a free man. You could have had your slipper with pleasure. At this moment I am under a commitment to Berati. His interests and his safety—if he is still alive—must be my first consideration.”
“Do you think that after all I hit him?” she asked eagerly.
“I fear that it is quite possible. All I know is that he was seated in his chair one moment, you fired, and when I had looked around the chair was empty.”
She smiled doubtfully.
“He is very hard to kill.”
“And it appears to me that you are a very inexperienced assassin!”
“That,” she confided, “is because I never wanted to kill a man before. Please give me my slipper.”
He shook his head.
“If Berati is alive,” he warned her, “it will be my duty to hand it over to him and to describe you according to the best of my ability.”
“And if he is dead?”
“If he is dead, my contract with him is finished and I shall leave Rome within an hour. You, at any rate, would be safe.”
“How shall you describe me if you have to?” she asked, with a bewildering smile.
Insouciance was a quality which Fawley, in common with most people, always admired in criminals and beautiful women. He tried his best with a clumsier tongue to follow her lead.
“Signorina,” he said, “or Mademoiselle—heaven help me if I can make up my mind as to your nationality—I am afraid that my description would be of very little real utility because I cannot imagine myself inventing phrases to describe you adequately.”
“That is quite good,” she approved, “for a man in conference with a would-be murderess. But after all I must look like something or other.”
“I will turn myself into a police proclamation,” he announced. “You have unusual eyes which are more normal now but which a few minutes ago were shooting lightnings of hate at me. They are a very beautiful colour—a kind of hazel, I suppose. You have an Italian skin, the ivory pallor of perfect health which belongs only to your country-people. Your hair I should rather like to feel but it looks like silk and it reminds one of dull gold. You have the figure of a child but it is obvious that you have the tongue, the brain, the experience of a woman who has seen something of life…With that description published, would you dare to walk the streets of Rome to-morrow?”
“A proud woman but, alas, I fear in perfect safety,” she sighed. “Too many people have failed with Berati and you distracted my attention. I saw his still, terrible face but when I looked and hoped for that transforming cloud of horror, I saw only you. You frightened me and I fled.”
Fawley moved slightly towards the door.
“It is plainly my duty,” he said, “to find out whether Berati is alive or dead.”
“I agree with you.”
“And when I have discovered?”
“Listen,” she begged, moving a little nearer towards him. “There is a tiny café in a fashionable but not too reputable corner of Rome in the arcade leading from the Plaza Vittoria. Its name is the Café of the Shining Star. You will find me there at ten o’clock. May I have my shoe so that I can make a dignified departure?”
Fawley shook his head. He pointed to an antique Italian armoire which looked as if it might be used as a boot cupboard.
“You can help yourself, Signorina. The slipper I have in my pocket I keep until I know whether Berati is alive or dead.”
“You keep it as evidence—yes? You would hand me over as the assassin? As though any one would believe your story!”
“All the same,” Fawley reminded her, “for the moment Berati is my master.”
He turned the handle of the door. She kissed the tips of her fingers to him lightly.
“I can see,” she sighed, “that you are one of those who do not change their minds. All the same, I warn you there is danger in what you are doing.”
“A slipper,” Fawley protested, “a delicate satin slipper with a slightly raised inner sole could never bring me ill luck.”
She shook her head and there was no ghost of a smile upon her lips just then.
“Medici buckles,” she confided. “They are very nearly priceless. Men and women in the old days paid with their lives for what you are doing.”
Fawley smiled.
“You shall have the buckle back,” he promised. “For the rest, I will use my penknife carefully.”
Once more Fawley entered Berati’s palatial bureau with a certain trepidation. His heart sank still further after his first glance towards the desk. The chair behind it was occupied by Prince Patoni.
“What about the Chief?” Fawley asked eagerly. “Was he hurt?”
The young man remained silent for a moment, his jet-black eyes fixed upon his visitor’s, his fingers toying with the watch-chain which was suspended from a high button of his waistcoat. He seemed, in his ravenlike black clothes, with his hooked nose, his thin aristocratic face and bloodless lips, like some bird of prey.
“Our Chief,” he announced calmly, “is unhurt. A modern assassin seldom succeeds in checking a really great career. He has left a message for you. Will you be pleased to receive it.”
Fawley drew a sigh of relief. Life seemed suddenly to become less complicated.
“Let me hear what it is, if you please,” he begged.
“The Chief has been summoned to his wife’s, the Principessa’s, reception at the palazzo. Some royalties, I believe, have made their appearance. It is his wish that you should repair there immediately. Here,” he added, pushing a highly glazed and beautifully engraved card across the table towards him, “is your invitation, as you are probably unknown to the servants and ushers of the household.”
Fawley glanced at the card and thrust it into his pocket.
“I will go, of course,” he replied, “but please explain to me how it is that Berati’s wife is Principessa? He himself, I understood, had no other rank than his military one of General.”
“That is quite true,” Patoni admitted, “but our illustrious Chief married some time ago the Principessa de Morenato…You will leave the bureau as you entered it. When you reach the street, turn to the right twice and the entrance to the palazzo courtyard confronts you. I must beg you not to delay.”
“Tell me before I leave,” Fawley begged, “if any orders have been issued for the arrest of the person who fired that shot?”
“The matter does not come, sir, within the scope of your activities,” was the icy reply.
Fawley took his departure and made his way according to directions to where, under a scarlet awning, guests were coming and going from the great grey stone palazzo. A very courtly seneschal received his card with enthusiasm and conducted him into a magnificent room still filled with men and women, talking together in animated groups, dancing in a further apartment, or listening to soft music in a still more distant one. He led Fawley towards a slightly raised floor, and, in a tone which he contrived to make almost reverential, announced the visitor. The Principessa, a handsome woman of the best Roman type, gave him her lifted fingers and listened agreeably to his few words.
“My husband has told me of your coming,” she confided. “It will give him pleasure before you leave to have a further word with you. He is showing one of the Royal Princes who have honoured us with their presence a famous Murillo which came into our family a short time ago…Elida, do not tell me you are going to leave us so soon?”
Fawley glanced around. Some instinct had already told him whom he would find standing almost at his elbow. It seemed to him, however, that he had not realised until that moment, in the over-heated, flower-scented room, with its soft odours of femininity, its vague atmosphere of sensuous disturbance, the full subtlety of her attraction. The tension which had somewhat hardened her features a few minutes ago had gone. An air of gentle courtesy had taken its place. She smiled as though the impending introduction would be a pleasure to her.
“It is Major Martin Fawley, an American of many distinctions which for the moment I cannot call to mind,” the Princess said. “My, alas, rather distant relative, the Princess Elida di Rezco di Vasena.”
The formal introduction with its somewhat Italian vagueness gave Fawley no hint as to whether the Princess were married or not, so he contented himself with a ceremonious bow. He murmured some commonplace to which she replied in very much the same fashion. Then a newcomer presented himself to the Princess and the latter turned away to greet him. Fawley found himself involuntarily glancing at his companion’s feet. She was elegantly shod in bronze slippers but the bronze and the lemon colour were not an ideal combination.
“It is your fault,” she reminded him gently. “In a short time I hope that you will see me properly shod. Tell me your news. There seem to be no rumours about.”
Her coolness was almost repelling and Fawley felt himself relieved by the gleam of anxiety in her eyes. The reply, however, which was framing upon his lips became unnecessary. It seemed as though both became aware of a certain fact at the same moment. Within a few feet of them, but so placed that he was not directly in their line of vision, stood the man whom all Italy was beginning to fear. General Berati, very impressive in his sombre uniform, very much alive, was watching the two with steady gaze.
“Princess,” Fawley said, determined to break through the tenseness of those few seconds, “I am wondering whether I have had the happiness to meet one of your family. There was a Di Vasena riding some wonderful horses in the show at San Remo last year. I met him at a friendly game of polo afterwards.”
“My brother,” she exclaimed, with a quick smile of appreciation. “I am glad that you remembered him. He is my favourite in the family. You are like all your country-people, I suppose, and the English too—very fond of games.”
“We have less opportunity nowadays for indulging in them,” Fawley regretted.
“You would say that I speak in—what is the English word?—platitudes, if I suggested that you had been driven to the greater amusements?”
“There is truth in the idea, at any rate,” Fawley admitted.
She turned and touched the arm of a young uniformed soldier who was standing near by.
“You remember Major Fawley, Antonio?” she asked. “He met you—”
“Why, at San Remo. Naturally I do,” the young man interrupted. “We played polo afterwards. The Ortini found us ponies and I remember, sir,” he went on, with a smile, “that you showed us how Americans can ride.”
“I shall leave you two together for a time,” Elida announced. “I have to make my adieux. Rome is suffering just now, as your witty Ambassador remarked the other day,” she observed, “from an epidemic of congested hospitality. Every one is entertaining at the same time.”
She passed on, made her curtsey to royalty and lingered for a moment with her hostess. Fawley exchanged a few commonplaces with Di Vasena and afterwards took his leave. He looked everywhere for his Chief, but Berati was nowhere to be found. It seemed almost as though he had sprung out of the earth to watch the meeting between his would-be assassin and Fawley, and then, having satisfied himself, disappeared.
The Café of the Shining Star could have existed nowhere but in Rome, and nowhere in Rome but in that deserted Plaza Vittoria, with its strange little pool of subdued lights. Its decorations were black, its furniture dingy but reminiscent of past magnificence. A broad staircase ascended from the middle of the sparsely occupied restaurant and from the pillars supporting it were suspended two lights enclosed in antique lanterns. As Fawley entered, a weary-looking maître d’hôtel came forward, bowed and without wasting words pointed to the stairs.
Madame, the patrona, from behind a small counter where, with her head supported between her hands, she studied the pages of her ledger, also glanced up and, with a welcoming smile, pointed upwards. Fawley mounted the stairs to a room in which barely a dozen people were seated at small tables—people of a class which for the moment he found it difficult to place. At the farther end of the room, at a table encircled by a ponderous screen, he found the Princess. A dour-looking woman standing patiently by her side fell back on his arrival.
“Sit down if you please, Major Fawley,” Elida begged him. “I have ordered wine. You see it here. Drink a glass of it or not, as you please. It is very famous—it has been in the cellars of this café for more years than I have lived—or perhaps you.”
Fawley obeyed her gestured invitation, seated himself opposite to her and poured out two glasses of the clear amber wine. She laughed a toast across at him.
“You come in a good humour, I trust,” she said. “You know at least that I am not an ordinary assassin. Perhaps I am sorry already that I raised my hand against my relation-in-law. He is on the point, I fear, of making a great mistake, but to kill—well—perhaps I was wrong.”
“I am very glad to hear you say so,” Fawley murmured.
“You have brought the slipper?”
“I have brought the slipper,” he acknowledged. “It has, in fact, never left my possession.”
“You will give it to me?” she exclaimed, holding out her hand.
“Yes, I will give it to you,” Fawley assented.
The tips of her fingers tapped hard against the tablecloth.
“I cannot wait,” she prayed. “Give it to me now.”
“There are terms,” Fawley warned her.
Disappointment shone in her eyes. Her lips quivered. For a moment his attention wandered. He was thinking that her mouth was the most exquisite thing he had ever seen. He was wondering—
“Do not keep me in suspense, please,” she begged. “What terms do you speak of?”
“You will not find them difficult,” he assured her, “especially as you have confessed just now that you are not an assassin at heart. Listen to my proposition.”
“Proposition,” she sighed, her eyes once more dancing. “I am intrigued. Will you commence? I am all eagerness.”
“Fold your hands in front of your bosom and swear to me that you will not repeat this afternoon’s adventure and you shall have your slipper.”
She held out her hands.
“Please place them exactly as you desire.”
Fawley crossed them. Like white flowers they were—soft and fragrant, with nails showing faintly pink underneath but innocent of any disfiguring stain of colour. She repeated after him the few words which form the sacred oath of the Roman woman. When she had finished, she treated him to a little grimace.
“You are too clever, my chivalrous captor,” she complained. “Fancy your being able to play the priest. And now, please, the slipper.”
Fawley drew it from his pocket and laid it upon the table. The exquisite paste buckle with the strangely set crown flamed out its brilliant colouring into the room.
“You regret the buckle?” she asked. “It is very beautiful and very valuable. It is quite authentic too. There is Medici blood in my veins. That, I suppose, is why I have the impulse to kill!”
A single lamp stood upon the table, with a worn shade of rose-coloured silk. Except for its rather fantastic and very dim illumination, they sat amongst the shadows. Her hand touched his, which still rested upon the slipper.
“You will give it to me?” she whispered.
“I shall give it to you,” Fawley agreed, “but please do not think that the buckle or even the fact that you have worn it are the only things I have found precious.”
“What do you mean?” she asked fearfully.
Fawley lifted the delicate inner sole of the slipper and looked up. Their eyes met across the table. She was breathing quickly.
“You have read it?” she gasped.
“Naturally.”
“You are keeping it?”
“On the contrary, I am returning it to you.”
A wave of relief drove the tension from her face. She seemed for the moment speechless. The paper which he handed across the table found its way almost mechanically into the jewelled handbag by her side.
“At the same time,” he went on gravely, “you must not hope for too much. I am in the service of Berati. I must tell him what I found in the slipper of the woman who tried to kill him.”
“You will tell him who it was?”
“I think that I am wrong, but that I propose to forget,” he told her. “You have probably made many men forget themselves in your brief years, Princess. You will make many more. What I read, I shall communicate to Berati. The source of my information I shall keep to myself. Take the slipper.”
Her hands were drawing it off the table but, as though by accident, they passed over Fawley’s and he felt their shivering warmth. There was a softer light in her eyes than he had ever seen.
“Princess—Elida—” he whispered.
She leaned towards him but Fawley swung suddenly around in his chair. Patoni, stark and sinister, was standing by the side of the screen, looking in. His smile was one of composed malevolence.
“I beg a thousand pardons,” he apologised, with a stiff little bow. “I am here on a mission of great importance.”
Fawley rose to his feet. He was as tall as Patoni and at that moment his face was as hard and set.
“It is part of your Italian manners,” he asked, “to play the spy in this way?”
“I have offered you my apologies,” was the cold retort. “A quarrel between us is not possible, Major Fawley. I am still of the Church and I do not fight duels. I am compelled to ask you to accompany me without a moment’s delay to the Generalissimo.”
“The Princess—” Fawley began.
“Has her duenna,” Patoni interrupted.
Elida leaned forward and suddenly clasped Fawley’s hand. He seemed somehow to have grown in stature, a man on fire with anger and without a doubt dangerous. Even the two carabinieri standing behind Patoni looked at him with respect.
“Please go,” she begged. “Please go with Prince Patoni, my friend. My car is waiting, my servant is here. I need no escort. I wish so much that you do as I ask.”
Fawley bent over her hands and touched them with his lips. Then he turned and left the room with Patoni.
In a life full of surprises Martin Fawley was inclined to doubt whether he had ever received a greater one than when, for the second time during the same day, he was ushered into the presence of General Berati, the most dreaded man in Rome. Gone was the severe high-necked and tight-waisted uniform; gone the iciness of his speech and the cold precision of his words. It was a tolerable imitation of a human being with whom Fawley was confronted—a dark-haired, undersized but sufficiently good-looking man dressed in a suit of apparently English tweeds, stretched at his full length upon the sofa of a comfortable sitting room leading out of his bureau, reading the New York Herald and with something that looked suspiciously like a Scotch whisky and soda by his side. He threw down his paper and welcomed his visitor with a grim cordiality.
“Come in, Major,” he invited. “I will offer you a whisky and soda as soon as you tell me exactly whom you found on the other side of that door.”
Fawley accepted the chair to which his host had pointed.
“May I take the liberty,” he begged, “of asking a question first?”
“Why not?” Berati answered with unabated good humour. “This is an unofficial conversation. Proceed.”
“Where did you disappear to after that first shot?”
Berati chuckled.
“I give audiences too easily,” he confided, “and for that reason, I have several little contrivances of my own invention. Some day I will show you this one. There is a button on my desk which I touch, the rubber floor upon which I sit disappears, and so do I, into the room below. I should explain perhaps that it is only a drop of a few feet and the end is what you call in England a feather bed. And now the answer to my question, please.”
Martin Fawley was probably as near complete embarrassment as ever before in his life. He hated the position in which he found himself. He hated what he was about to do. He kept his countenance but he was bitterly mortified as he felt for a secret pocket inside his coat and silently withdrew his cigarette case.
“General Berati,” he said, “I feel thoroughly ashamed of myself and I shall merit what you will doubtless think of me. At the same time, do remember this—I am to some extent a mercenary in your service. I allow myself that amount of excuse. It was a woman who fired the shot and, as you see, I am handing back my papers.”
“This is most intriguing,” Berati observed. “I gather then that you refuse to tell me her name?”
“Frankly,” Fawley replied, “I believe you know it already but, all the same, you are right: I refuse to tell you her name. I have been in your service for the matter of a few hours, I see you nearly killed, I know who fired the shot and I am not going to tell you who it was.”
“Capital,” Berati exclaimed. “Just what I should have expected from you. Put back your cigarette case, my young friend. After all, you probably saved my life, for, thanks to you, there was no second shot.”
“You know who it was?” Fawley asked, a little bewildered.
“Perfectly well,” Berati confided. “I joined my wife’s guests,” he went on, “chiefly for the pleasure of seeing whether you showed any embarrassment when you were presented to a certain one of our Roman beauties. My congratulations, Major. You have some of the gifts necessary in our profession, at any rate. Let me offer you a whisky and soda.”
Fawley thanked him and helped himself. Berati’s intonation as well as his manner seemed to have become curiously Anglo-Saxon.
“Listen, my friend,” he continued, “when an attempt is made upon my life, I never, if I can help it, allow anything to appear in the journals. You do not wish to give away a beautiful lady any more than I want to admit to the indignity of having been nearly wiped off the earth by so frail an instrument.”
“I think, sir, that you are a very brave and a very forgiving man,” Fawley declared, with an impulsiveness which was absolutely foreign to his character.
Berati laughed almost gaily.
“No man,” he said, “who is in touch with the great affairs of the world can afford to be made ridiculous. An attempt on my life by my wife’s niece, by the Princess Elida, is a thing to smile at. Nevertheless,” he went on, his tone becoming a trifle graver, “I have reason to believe that the Princess was carrying with her a paper of some importance.”
“She was,” Fawley admitted.
“You discovered it?” Berati snapped out with a trace of his former manner.
“I discovered it,” Fawley confessed. “Its purport is at your disposal.”
“And the paper?”
“I returned it to the Princess.”
Berati’s air of bonhomie temporarily disappeared. He scowled.
“An amazing act of gallantry at my expense,” he sneered.
“Bad enough in my position, I admit, but not quite as bad as it seems,” Fawley pointed out. “I have already told you that the purport of that paper is at your disposal.”
“It was signed by one who used to bear a great name in Germany?” Berati asked.
“It was,” Fawley assented.
“And in return for certain action on your part you were offered—?”
“I can tell you specifically, if you like.”
Berati shook his head.
“A copy of the proposed agreement reached me ten minutes ago. My mind is not made up. I have decided to wait until you have visited Germany. Your reports from there will influence me. At present I have an open mind. The Princess Elida has been bitterly disappointed,” he went on, “by what she thought was a point-blank refusal on my part. She believes that I lean towards Behrling. She has the usual woman’s fault—she jumps at conclusions.
“Is it permitted to ask what your intentions are with regard to the Princess?”
Berati grunted.
“Nothing venomous, I can assure you. I do not make war on women. She is now on her way to Vienna in the safest of my airships. I regret the necessity for such discipline, but she will not be allowed to cross the frontier again for a year. This need not disturb you, my friend, for I doubt whether you will spend much of your time in this country. You will recognise the fact, I am sure, that however much I may choose to risk in the way of danger, I cannot afford to be made ridiculous.”
“I think that you have behaved very generously,” Fawley declared.
Berati rose to his feet and touched the bell.
“The car in which you arrived is waiting for you, Fawley,” he announced. “Your place is taken in the night train for Monte Carlo. You have thirty-five minutes. Good luck to you. Carlo,” he added in Italian, to the servant who had answered the bell, “show this gentleman to his automobile. He goes to the Central Railway Station. By the by, Fawley, your luggage has all been registered and your small things put in your compartment. Once more—good night and good luck to you.”
Fawley lingered for a moment until the servant was out of hearing.
“How do you propose to communicate with me, General?” he asked.
“Concerning that you need not worry,” was the bland reply. “I do not approve of the telephone or the telegraph and I like even less letters which go through the post. Live your own perfectly natural life. Some day you will find in your salon a blue envelope.”
The blue envelope!
Fawley threw down the tennis racquet he had been carrying, turned the key in the lock of his sitting room door at the Hôtel de France and moved swiftly to the writing table on which the letter had been placed. He tore it open, read it very deliberately—for it was in a somewhat curious cipher which he had only just committed to memory—and then, lighting a match, watched it slowly consume to ashes. Afterwards he lingered for a few minutes on his balcony, looking up towards the misty peaks eastwards of Mont Agel. He no longer regretted the fortnight’s idleness, the nonappearance of Krust, the almost stagnant calm of his days. He had thoroughly established himself as a leisure-loving American with a passion for games. He now busied himself at the telephone, cancelling a few social engagements, for Fawley, reserved though he was by habit, was a man always sought after.
“A few days’ golf up at Sospel,” he told every one, after he had packed his clothes.
He wondered a little grimly whither those few days’ golf would lead him. Perhaps to the same place as Joseffi, who had been found in the gardens with a bullet through his heart and a revolver by his side, but who had never been known to enter the Casino in his life.
“You are not leaving us, sir?” the valet de chambre enquired, as he answered the bell.
“Only for a few days,” Fawley assured him. “I am keeping on my rooms.”
“You are not leaving us, Major Fawley, I trust,” the smiling and urbane manager asked him in the hall.
“Only for a few days,” Fawley repeated. “I am going to explore your
hills and try another golf links. Back about Sunday, I should think. Keep my letters.”
“I wish you a pleasant and successful expedition,” the manager remarked, with a final bow.
Fawley’s smile was perhaps a little enigmatic. He waved his hand and drove off without further speech.
* * * * *