Chapter Ten
The Man of Secrets
“I don’t understand you,” I exclaimed, resenting this charge against the man who was my most intimate friend. “Seton has been even a better friend to poor Blair than myself.”
Fra Antonio smiled strangely and mysteriously, as only the subtle Italian can. He seemed to pity my ignorance, and inclined to humour me in my belief in Seton’s genuineness.
“I know,” he laughed. “I know almost as much as you do upon the one side, while upon the other my knowledge extends somewhat further. All I can say is that I have watched, and have formed my own conclusions.”
“That Seton was not his friend?”
“That Seton was not his friend,” he repeated slowly and very distinctly.
“But surely you make no direct charge against him?” I cried. “You surely don’t think he’s responsible for this tragedy – if tragedy it really is.”
“I make no direct charge,” was his ambiguous reply. “Time will reveal the truth – no doubt.”
I longed to ask him straight out whether he did not sometimes go under the name of Paolo Melandrini, yet I feared to do so lest I should arouse his suspicion unduly.
“Time can only reveal that Reginald Seton has been one of the dead man’s best friends,” I said reflectively.
“Outwardly, yes,” was the Capuchin’s dubious remark.
“An enemy as deadly as the Ceco?” I inquired, watching his face the while.
“The Ceco!” he gasped, instantly taken aback by my bold remark. “Who told you of him? What do you know regarding him?”
The monk had evidently forgotten what he had written in that letter to Blair.
“I know that he is in London,” I responded, taking my cue from his own words. “The girl is with him,” I added, utterly unaware however of the identity of the person referred to.
“Well?” he asked.
“And if they are in London it is surely for no good purpose?”
“Ah!” he said. “Blair has told you something – told you of his suspicions?”
“Of late he has gone about in daily dread of secret assassination,” I replied. “He was evidently afraid of the Ceco.”
“And surely he had need to be,” exclaimed Fra Antonio, his dark, brilliant eyes again turned upon mine in the semi-darkness. “The Ceco is not an individual to be dealt with easily.”
“But what took him to London?” I demanded. “Did he go with harmful intentions?”
The burly monk shrugged his shoulders, answering —
“Dick Dawson was never of a very benevolent disposition. He evidently discovered something, and swore to be avenged.”
His remarks made plain one very important fact, namely, that the man who went by the nickname of the “blind man” in Italy was really an Englishman of the name of Dick Dawson – an adventurer most probably.
“Then you suspect him of complicity in the theft of the secret?” I suggested.
“Well, as the little sachet of chamois leather is missing, I am inclined to think that it must have passed into his hands.”
“And the girl, what of her?”
“His daughter, Dolly, will assist him, that’s plain. She’s as shrewd as her father, and possesses a woman’s cunning into the bargain – a dangerous girl, to say the least. I warned poor Blair of them both,” he added, suddenly, it seemed, recollecting his letter. “But I am glad you have recognised one of these photographs. His name is Seton, you say. Well, if he is your friend, take my advice and beware. Are you certain you have never seen this other man – a friend of Seton’s?” he asked very earnestly.
I carried the picture in my hand to where the dim oil lamp was burning, and examined it very closely. It was a vignette of a long-faced, bald-headed, full-bearded man, wearing a stand-up collar, a black frock-coat and well-tied bow cravat. The stud in his shirt-front was somewhat peculiar, for it seemed like the miniature cross of some foreign order of chivalry, and produced a rather neat and novel effect. The eyes were those of a keen, crafty man, and the hollow cheeks gave the countenance a slightly haggard and striking appearance.
It was a face that, to my recollection, I had never seen before, yet such were its peculiarities that they at once became photographed indelibly upon my memory.
I told him of my failure to recognise who it was, whereupon he urged —
“When you return, watch the movements of your so-called friend Seton, and you will perhaps meet his friend. When you do, write to me here, and leave him to me.” And he replaced the photograph in the drawer, but as he did so my quick eye detected that within was a playing-card, the seven of clubs, with some letters written upon it very similar to those upon the card in my pocket. I mentioned it, but he merely smiled and quickly closed the drawer.
Yet surely the fact of the cipher being in his possession was more than strange.
“Do you ever travel away from Lucca?” I inquired at last, recollecting how I had met him at Blair’s table in Grosvenor Square, but not at all satisfied regarding the discovery of the inscribed card.
“Seldom – very seldom,” he answered. “It is so difficult to obtain permission, and then it is only given to visit relatives. If there is any monastery in the vicinity of our destination we must beg our bed there, in preference to remaining in a private house. The rules sound irksome to you,” he added with a smile. “But I assure you they do not gall us in the least. They are beneficial to man’s happiness and comfort, all of them.”
Again I turned the conversation, endeavouring to ascertain some facts concerning the dead man’s mysterious secret, which I somehow felt convinced was known to him. But all to no avail. He would tell me nothing.
All he explained was that the reason of the appointment in Lucca that evening was a very strong one, and that if alive the millionaire would undoubtedly have kept it.
“He was in the habit of meeting me at certain intervals either in the Church of San Frediano, or at other places in Lucca, in Pescia, or Pistoja,” the monk said. “We generally varied the place of meeting from time to time.”
“And that, of course, accounts for his mysterious absences from home,” I remarked, for his movements were frequently very erratic, so that even Mabel was unaware of his address. He was generally supposed, however, to be in the North of England or in Scotland. No one had any idea that he travelled so far afield as Central Italy.
The monk’s statement also made it plain that Blair had some very strong motive for keeping these frequent appointments. Fra Antonio, his secret friend, had undoubtedly also been his most intimate and most trusted one.
Why had he kept this strange and mysterious friendship from us all – even from Mabel?
I gazed upon the Italian’s hard, sunburnt face and tried to penetrate the mystery written there, but in vain. No man can keep a secret like the priest of the confessional, or the monk in his cell.
“And what is your intention, now that poor Blair is dead?” I asked at length.
“My intention, like yours, is to discover the truth,” he replied. “It will be a difficult matter, no doubt, but I trust that we shall, in the end, succeed, and that you will regain the lost secret.”
“But may not Blair’s enemies make use of it in the meantime?” I queried.
“Ah! of course we cannot prevent that,” answered Fra Antonio. “We have to look to the future, and allow the present to take care of itself. You, in London, will do your best to discover whether Blair has met with foul play and at whose hands, while I, here in Italy, will try to find out whether there was any further motive than the theft of the secret.”
“But if the little chamois-bag had been stolen, would not Blair himself have missed it?” I suggested. “He was quite conscious for several hours before he died.”
“He might have forgotten it. Men’s memories often fail them completely in the hours preceding death.”
Night had fallen before the great wooden clappers, used to arouse the monks to go to prayers at two o’clock in the morning, resounded through the cloister as a reminder that I, a stranger, must take my departure.
Fra Antonio rose, lit a great old brass lantern, and conducted me along those silent corridors, out across the small piazza and down the hillside to the main road which lay straight and white in the darkness.
Then, having directed me on the road, he grasped my hand in his big palm, rough through hard toil at his patch of garden, and said —
“Rely upon me to do my best. I knew poor Blair – yes, knew him better than you did, Signor Greenwood. I knew, too, something of his remarkable secret, and therefore I am aware how strange and how mysterious are all the circumstances. I shall work on here, making inquiries, while you return to London and pursue yours. I would, however, make the suggestion to you that if you meet Dick Dawson strike up a friendship with him, and with Dolly. They are a strange pair, but friendship with them may be profitable.”
“What!” I exclaimed. “Friendship with the man whom you declare was one of Blair’s bitterest enemies?”
“And why not? Is it not diplomacy to be well received in the enemy’s camp? Recollect that your own stake in this affair is the greatest of any one’s. The secret is bequeathed to you – the secret of Burton Blair’s millions!”
“And I intend to recover it,” I declared firmly.
“I only hope you will, signore,” he said in a voice which to me sounded full of a double meaning. “I only hope you will.”
Then wishing me “Addio, e buona fortuna,” Fra Antonio, the Capuchin and man of secrets, turned and left me standing in the dark highway.
Hardly had I advanced fifty yards before a short dark figure loomed out from the shadow of some bushes, and by the voice that hailed me I knew it to be old Babbo, whom I had believed had grown tired of awaiting me. He had, however, evidently followed us from the church, and seeing us enter the monastery had patiently awaited my return.
“Has the signore discovered what he wished?” inquired the old Italian, quickly.
“Some of it, not all,” was my rejoinder. “You saw that monk whom I met?”
“Yes. Since you have been in the convent I have made some inquiries, and find that the most popular Capuchin in the whole of Lucca is Fra Antonio, and that his charitableness is well known. It is he who begs from door to door through the city for contesimi and lire in order that the poor shall have their daily soup and bread. Report accredits him with great wealth, which on entering the Order of the Capuchins he made over as a gift to the fraternity. He is also known to have a friend to whom he is very much attached – an Englishman who has one eye so badly injured that he is known by the townspeople as the Ceco.”
“The Ceco!” I cried. “What have you discovered regarding him?”
“The keeper of a little cheese-shop close to the gate by which we left the city proved very communicative. Like all her class, she seemed to greatly admire our friend the Cappuccino. She told me of the frequent visits of this one-eyed Englishman who had lived so long in Italy that he was almost an Italian. The Ceco was in the habit, it seemed, of staying at the old albergo, the Croce di Malto, sometimes accompanied by a young and very pretty lady, his daughter.”
“Where do they come from?”
“Oh! I’ve not yet been able to discover that,” was Babbo’s reply. “It seems, however, that the constant visits of the Ceco to the monastery have aroused the public interest. The people say that Fra Antonio nowadays is not so active in his searches after money for the poor now he is too much occupied with his English friend.”
“And the girl?”
“It is evident that her beauty is remarkable, even in Lucca, this city of pretty girls,” answered the old man with a grin. “She speaks Tuscan perfectly, and could, they say, easily pass for an Italian. Her back is not straight like those Inglese one sees in the Via Tornabuoni – if the signore will pardon the criticism,” the old fellow added apologetically.
This proof that Dick Dawson, against whom the monk had warned Burton Blair, was actually the friend of the Capuchin brother rendered the situation more puzzling and more complicated. I recognised in these frequent consultations a secret plot against my friend, a conspiracy which had apparently been carried to a successful issue.
The girl Dolly, whoever she was, had of course never been to the monastery, but she had evidently been in Lucca as a participator in the plot to obtain Burton Blair’s valuable secret, the secret that was now mine by law.
We there and then resolved to make inquiries at the Croce di Malto, that antique old hostelry in a narrow side street peculiarly Italian, and which still prefers to be designated as an albergo, in preference to the modern name of hotel.
Dick Dawson, known as the Ceco, was undoubtedly in London, but with the connivance and aid of that crafty and ingenious man of secrets, who had so cleverly endeavoured to establish with me a false friendship.
Was it actually this man who hid his evil deeds beneath his shabby religious habit who was responsible for the death of poor Blair and the mysterious disappearance of that strange little object which was his most treasured possession. I somehow felt convinced that such was the actual truth.
Chapter Eleven
Which Explains the Peril of Mabel Blair
From inquiries made by old Babbo next morning at the Cross of Malta, it appeared quite plain that Mr Richard Dawson, whoever he was, constantly visited Lucca, and always with the object of consulting the popular Capuchin brother.
Sometimes the one-eyed Englishman who spoke Italian so well would journey up to the monastery and remain there several hours, and at others Fra Antonio would come to the inn and there remain closeted in closest secrecy with the visitor.
The Ceco, so called because of his defective vision, was apparently a man of means, for his tips to the waiters and maids were always generous, and when a guest, he and his daughter always ordered the best that could be procured. They came from Florence, the padrone thought, but of that he was not quite certain. The letters and telegrams he received securing rooms were dispatched from various towns in both France and Italy, which seemed to show that they were constantly travelling.
That was all the information we could gather. The identity of the mysterious Paolo Melandrini was, as yet, unproven. My primary object in travelling to Italy was not accomplished, but I nevertheless felt satisfied that I had at last discovered two of poor Blair’s most intimate and yet secret friends.
But why the secrecy? When I recollected how close had been our friendship, I felt surprised, and even a trifle annoyed that he had concealed the existence of these men from me. Much as I regretted to think ill of a friend who was dead, I could not suppress a suspicion that his acquaintance with those men was part of his secret, and that the latter was some dishonourable one.
Soon after midday, I crammed my things into my valise, and, impelled by a strong desire to return to safeguard, the interests of Mabel Blair, left Lucca for London. Babbo travelled with me as far as Pisa, where we changed, he journeying back to Florence and I picking up the sleeping-car express on its way through from Rome to Calais.
While standing on the platform at Pisa, however, the shabby old man, who had grown, thoughtful during the past half-hour or so, suddenly said —
“A strange idea has occurred to me, ignore. You will recollect that I learned in the Via Cristofano that the Signor Melandrini wore gold-rimmed glasses. Is it possible that he does so in Florence in order to conceal his defective sight?”
“Why – I believe so!” I cried. “I believe you’ve guessed the truth! But on the other hand, neither his servant nor the neighbours suspected him of being a foreigner.”
“He speaks Italian very well,” agreed the old man, “but they said he had a slight accent.”
“Well,” I said, excited at this latest theory. “Return at once to the Via San Cristofano and make further inquiries regarding the mysterious individual’s eyesight and his glasses. The old woman who keeps his rooms has no doubt seen him without his glasses, and can tell you the truth.”
“Signore,” was the old fellow’s answer. And I then wrote down for him my address in London to which he was to dispatch a telegram if his suspicions were confirmed.
Ten minutes later, the roaring Calais-Rome express, the limited train of three wagon-lits, dining-car and baggage-car, ran into the great vaulted station, and, wishing the queer old Babbo farewell, I climbed in and was allotted my berth for Calais.
To describe the long, wearying journey back from the Mediterranean to the Channel, with those wheels grinding for ever beneath, and the monotony only broken by the announcement that a meal was ready, is useless. You, who read this curious story of a man’s secret, who have travelled backwards and forwards over that steel road to Rome, know well how wearisome it becomes, if you have been a constant traveller between England and Italy.
Suffice it to say that thirty-six hours after entering the express at Pisa, I crossed the platform at Charing Cross, jumped into a hansom and drove to Great Russell Street. Reggie was not yet back from his warehouse, but on my table among a quantity of letters I found a telegram in Italian from Babbo. It ran: —
“Melandrini has left eye injured. Undoubtedly same man. – Carlini.”
The individual who was destined to be Mabel Blair’s secretary and adviser was her dead father’s bitterest enemy – the Englishman, Dick Dawson.
I stood staring at the telegram, utterly stupefied.
The strange couplet which the dead man had written in his will, and urged upon me to recollect, kept running in my head —
“King Henry the Eighth was a knave to his queens. He’d one short of seven – and nine or ten scenes!”
What hidden meaning could it convey? The historic facts of King Henry’s marriages and divorces were known to me just as they were known to every fourth-standard English child throughout the country. Yet there was certainly some motive why Blair should have placed the rhyme there – perhaps as a key to something, but to what?
After a hurried wash and brush up, for I was very dirty and fatigued after my long journey, I took a cab to Grosvenor Square, where I found Mabel dressed in her neat black, sitting alone reading in her own warm, cosy room, an apartment which her father had, two years ago, fitted tastefully and luxuriously as her boudoir.
She sprang to her feet quickly and greeted me in eagerness when the man announced me.
“Then you are back again, Mr Greenwood,” she cried. “Oh, I’m so very glad. I’ve been wondering and wondering that I had heard no news of you. Where have you been?”
“In Italy,” I answered, throwing off my overcoat at her suggestion, and taking a low chair near her. “I have been making inquiries.”
“And what have you discovered?”
“Several facts which tend rather to increase the mystery surrounding your poor father than to elucidate it.”
I saw that her face was paler than it had been when I left London, and that she seemed unnerved and strangely anxious. I asked her why she had not gone to Brighton or to some other place on the south coast as I had suggested, but she replied that she preferred to remain at home, and that in truth she had been anxiously awaiting my return.
I explained to her in brief what I had discovered in Italy: of my meeting with the Capuchin brother and of our curious conversation.
“I never heard my father speak of him,” she said. “What kind of man is he?”
I described him as best I could, and told her how I had met him at dinner there, in their house, during her absence with Mrs Percival in Scotland.
“I thought that a monk, having once entered an Order, could not re-assume the ordinary garments of secular life,” she remarked.
“Neither can he,” I said. “That very fact increases the suspicion against him, combined with the words I overheard later outside the Empire Theatre.” And then I went on to relate the incident, just as I have written it down in a foregoing chapter.
She was silent for some time, her delicate pointed chin resting upon her palm, as she gazed thoughtfully into the fire. Then at last she asked —
“And what have you found out regarding this mysterious Italian in whose hands my father has left me? Have you seen him?”
“No, I have not seen him, Mabel,” was my response. “But I have discovered that he is a middle-aged Englishman, and not an Italian at all. I shall not, I think, be jealous of his attentions to you, for he has a defect – he has only one eye.”
“Only one eye!” she gasped, her face blanching in an instant as she sprang to her feet. “A man with one eye – and an Englishman! Why,” she cried, “you surely don’t say that the man in question is named Dawson – Dick Dawson?”
“Paolo Melandrini and Dick Dawson are one and the same,” I said plainly, utterly amazed at the terrifying effect my words had had upon her.
“But surely my father has not left me in the hands of that fiend – the man whose very name is synonymous of all that is cunning, evil and brutal? It can’t be true – there must be some mistake, Mr Greenwood – there must be! Ah! you do not know the reputation of that one-eyed Englishman as I do, or you would wish me dead rather than see me in association with him. You must save me!” she cried in terror, bursting into a torrent of tears. “You promised to be my friend. You must save me, save me from that man – the man whose very touch deals death!” And next instant she reeled, stretched forth her thin white hands wildly, and would have fallen senseless to the floor had I not sprang forward and caught her in my arms.
Whom, I wondered, was this man Dick Dawson that she held in such terror and loathing – this one-eyed man who was evidently a link with her father’s mysterious past?