Chapter Eight
“The Mysterious Mr Miller.”
On the following day, about noon, I took a cab to the Italian Embassy, that fine stone-built mansion in Grosvenor Square.
A tall footman with powdered hair asked me into the great reception-room where, at one end, hung a great portrait of the late King Humbert, the other end of the room opening upon a large conservatory where stood a grand piano. It was a sombre apartment, furnished with solid, old-fashioned taste and embellished with a number of photographs of noteworthy persons presented to the popular Ambassador and his wife in the various cities wherein His Excellency had represented his sovereign.
Like most London reception-rooms, it looked its best at night under the myriad electric lamps. At noon, as I sat there, it looked a trifle too dull and gloomy. Presently one of the staff of the Embassy, a short, pleasant-faced, elderly Italian of charming manner, and speaking perfect English, greeted me courteously and inquired the object of my request to see His Excellency.
“I have called,” I said, “in order to give some confidential information which may be of interest to His Excellency. The fact is I have been present at the death of the ex-Minister for Justice Nardini.”
“His death!” exclaimed the pleasant official. “What do you mean? Is he dead?”
“He died here, in London, and unrecognised. It was only on searching his papers that I discovered his identity. He came to an obscure boarding-house in Shepherd’s Bush, giving the name of Massari, but on the following day he died. He had for a long time been suffering from an internal complaint and suddenly collapsed. The effort of the rapid journey from Rome and the anxiety were evidently too great for him.”
“This is astounding! We had no idea he was here! There were orders given for his arrest, you know,” remarked the Embassy archivist, for such I afterwards found him to be – a trusted official who for many years has held that position, and is well-known and popular in the diplomatic circle in London. “But,” he added suddenly, “how were you enabled to establish his identity?”
“By these,” I answered, drawing out a packet of official papers from my pocket, opening them and handing him one of them to read.
The instant his eyes fell upon it he started, turned it over, and looked up at me amazed.
“I presume you know Italian?” he asked quickly.
I nodded in the affirmative.
“Then you are aware what these papers are – most important Government documents, abstracted from the archives of the Ministry of Justice in Rome?”
“I know,” I replied briefly. “That is why I secured them, and why I have brought them to His Excellency. They certainly should not be allowed to go into the hands of any one, for they contain much confidential information regarding certain well-known persons.”
“Of course,” he said. “His Excellency will, I’m sure, be extremely indebted to you for acting with such discretion. Had they fallen into the hands of the London police they might have been copied, and the secret of our methods known. Besides, in any case, it surely would be most detrimental to our prestige, if the public knew that confidential reports of this character were being allowed to pass from hand to hand for any one to read.”
“I viewed the matter from exactly the same standpoint,” I said. “My own opinion is that Nardini intended either to sell them, or to levy blackmail by their means.”
But the official only shrugged his shoulders in ignorance. It was not likely that he would condemn his own compatriot, even though at heart he despised both the man and his dishonest methods.
Each paper he examined carefully, and once or twice gave vent to ejaculations of surprise when he read facts concerning certain persons in high positions in Rome which amazed him.
“At this moment His Excellency is unfortunately out, but I trust, Mr Leaf, you will leave these with me,” he suggested. “We shall send them back under seal to Rome.”
“Of course, that was my intention,” I said. And then, in reply to some further questions, I described to him the circumstances in which Nardini had died. Of course I made no mention of Lucie Miller nor of her strange story of the dead man’s mysterious hatred of myself. I only apologised that I had not thought of communicating with the Italian Consulate, and expressed a hope that the restoration of these documents might partly atone for my remissness.
“There is, I suppose, nothing else among the dead man’s belongings to interest us?” he asked seriously. “You have, of course, made careful search?”
“Yes. I have had an inventory made by a solicitor. There is nothing else,” I answered; and after giving my courteous friend my club address, and chatting for some ten minutes longer, I received his renewed thanks, and departed.
My one thought now was of Lucie Miller, the woman whose piteous appeal to the fugitive had been in vain. Several matters puzzled me and held me mystified.
Sammy now seemed reluctant to discuss the matter any farther. Light-hearted, easy-going and irresponsible, he declared that he wasn’t going to trouble his head about mysteries. The Italian was dead and buried, and there let him rest. And as for Lucie, he had told me the truth concerning her, and it ought to suffice me.
But it did not suffice me.
That desperate appeal she had written to the man who had held her future in his hands showed me that she was in dire straits. What could be the allegation against her?
As day succeeded day and she did not return I became convinced that it was not her intention to do so. From the Embassy I received an official letter of thanks signed by His Excellency himself, but it was evident that they had not revealed the truth to the press, for the newspapers were still full of hue-and-cry after the absconding ex-Minister.
I recollected that the desperate girl had told me that she had an aunt “living in the country,” but she had not told me in what locality, and “the country” was a big place in which to search, more especially as I did not know the lady’s name. She had told me also that she lived in Leghorn where, being English, it would be easy to find her. Yet somehow I held a strong belief that she had not returned to Italy.
The police record gave Miller’s place of birth as Studland, in Dorsetshire, therefore I began to wonder whether, if I went there, I should be able to discover any of the family. Surely somebody would know some facts concerning the family. From the Gazetteer I discovered that the place was a small village on the sea, not far from Swanage, and on the following morning, without saying anything to Sammy, I took train from Waterloo. At Swanage I hired a fly from that hotel which faces the bay so pleasantly with grounds sloping to the water, and an hour later I descended at the inn in Studland village.
It was a quiet, quaint old-world place, I found, with a queer ancient little church hidden away among the trees at the back. In the bar-parlour of the “Lion” I ordered some tea, and then, in the course of a chat with the stout, cheery old publican I casually inquired after some friends of mine named Miller.
“Oh! yes,” he said. “Old Miss Miller lives ’ere still – at the Manor ’Ouse just beyond the village. You passed it just before you came down the hill from Swanage way. They’re one of the oldest families ’ere in Studland. One of the Millers – Sir Roger ’e was called – was governor of Corfe Castle under Queen Elizabeth, so I’ve ’eard say.”
“Then the Millers have always lived at the Manor?” I remarked.
“Of course. The property really belongs to Mr James, but ’e’s always abroad, so ’is sister, old Miss Catherine, lives in the ’ouse and looks after it.”
“Is this Mr Miller named James Harding Miller?” I asked.
“Yes. That’s ’im. They calls ’im the mysterious Mr Miller. ’E always was a wild rascal when ’e wor a boy, they say. The old gentleman could do nothing with him, so ’e was sent abroad, and has lived there mostly ever since.”
“Has he any children?”
“A girl. The servants at the Manor talk a lot about ’er, and say she’s very nice. She’s often ’ere.”
“He’s well off, I suppose?”
“Oh, dear no, sir,” declared the innkeeper. “The Millers are as poor as church mice. The value of land’s gone down so of late years. The old place is mortgaged up to the hilt to some Jews in London, an’ it’s a pity – a thousand pities.”
All this, together with other facts and gossip which the garrulous old fellow revealed to me, was of extreme interest, and I congratulated myself upon the success of my first investigation.
“When did you last see that mysterious Mr Miller, as you call him?”
“Oh! It’s a long time now ’e ’aven’t been in Studland. Once, about three years ago, ’e came without any luggage they say – and stayed over a twelvemonth. ’E’s a queer man. ’E never speaks to the likes of us.”
I resolved to act boldly and call upon old Miss Miller and inquire after her niece. Therefore I went out and up the hill in the bright sunshine until I came to the old and rather tumble-down lodge gate, and then, after walking a short distance up the drive, I came within sight of a large old Elizabethan mansion, long and rambling and time-mellowed – a typical English home surrounded by great trees in the centre of a small park.
A neat maid answered my summons, and I was at once ushered into a quaint old oak-panelled room off the hall, the furniture of which was undoubtedly Elizabethan, with rich old brocades dropping to pieces with age. I examined everything with interest, and then walked to the deep diamond-paned window and was looking across the park admiring the delightful vista when, of a sudden, I heard a movement behind me, and turning, confronted a tall, thin, dark-haired man, slightly grey, with bony features, a pair of sharp, closely-set eyes and scraggy brown beard. He was dressed in dark grey tweeds, and wore white spats over his boots.
“Mr Leaf?” he inquired, glancing at the card I had sent in. “I am Miss Miller’s brother,” he explained. “My name is James Harding Miller. Do you wish to see my sister very urgently? She has a headache, and has sent me to make her apologies.”
I started when he introduced himself.
I was actually face to face with the ingenious scoundrel whom Sammy had denounced, and whom the Italian police so strongly suspected to be the leader of one of the cleverest gangs of malefactors in Europe.
Chapter Nine
Contains a Surprise
James Harding Miller was a thoroughgoing cosmopolitan of most gentlemanly exterior. His grey face was deeply lined and bore that curious washed-out look of a man who had lived many years in a hot climate. After ten years or so the fiery Italian sun no longer tans the face of the northerner, but on the contrary his hair goes prematurely grey, and each year as the burning summer comes he is less able to withstand the heat of the “lion” days. His leanness, his foreign-cut clothes, and the slight gesticulation as he spoke all showed him to be a man more at home in the bright Italian land of song and sunlight than there, in an English village, the proprietor of that charming old home of his honourable ancestors.
In reply to his question I was rather evasive, saying that I happened to be in Swanage, and had driven out to pay a complimentary call upon his sister. She was not to put herself out of the way in the least, I urged. I should remain in Swanage for some days and hoped to have the pleasure of calling again.
Then turning and glancing around, I exclaimed: – “What a delightful old room! To me it is a real pleasure to enter a thoroughly English home, as this is.”
“Why?” he inquired, eyeing me with some surprise. “Because I live almost always on the Continent, and after a time foreign life and foreign ways jar upon the Englishman. At least I’ve found it so.”
“Ah!” He sighed, rather heavily I thought. “And I, too, have found it so. I quite agree with you. One may travel the world over, as I have done these past twenty years, yet there’s no place like our much-abused old England, after all.”
“Oh, then you’ve been a rolling stone, like myself,” I remarked, delighted at the success of my ruse.
“Yes. And I still am,” was his answer, given rather sadly. “Ever since my poor wife’s death, now nearly twenty years ago, I’ve been a wanderer. This place is mine, but I’m scarcely ever here. Why? I can’t for the life of me tell you. I’ve tried to settle down, but cannot. After a week here in this quiet rural dulness, the old fever sets up in my blood, a longing for action, a longing to go south to Italy – the country which seems to hold me in a kind of magnetism which I have never been able to resist.”
“And I, too, love Italy,” I said. “Is it not strange that most of us who have lived any length of time in that country of blossoming magnolias and gentle vines always desire to return to it. We may abuse its defects, we may revile its people as dishonest idlers, we may execrate its snail-like railways and run down its primitive hotels, yet all the same we have a secret longing to return to that glowing land where life is love, where art is in the very atmosphere, where the sun brings gladness to the heaviest heart, and the night silence is broken by love stornelli and the mandoline.”
“You are right,” he said, gazing straight out of the old leaded window and speaking almost as though to himself. “Byron found it so, Shelley, Smollet, Trollope, the Brownings and hosts of others. They were fascinated by the fatal beauty of Italy – just as a man is so often drawn to his doom by the face of a beautiful woman. And after all we are but straws on the winds of the hour.”
Then, turning to a cabinet, I bent and admired a fine old Lowestoft tea-set and a collection of old blue posset-pots, whereupon he said: —
“Ah! I see you are interested in antiques. Do you care for pictures? I have one or two.”
“I do. I should delight to see them,” I answered with enthusiasm; therefore he led me across the low old-fashioned hall with its great oak beams and open fireplace into a long gallery where the floor was polished, and along one side was hung a choice collection of masters of the Bolognese, Tuscan and Venetian schools.
At a glance I saw that they were of considerable value, and as I walked along slowly examining them I half feared lest I might come face to face with the daughter of the house.
Mine was a bold adventure, and surely it was fortunate for me that old Miss Catherine had a headache.
Through room after room he conducted me with all the pride of a collector showing his treasures. Indeed, I was amazed to find such a perfect museum of Italian art hidden away in that picturesque old Manor House. “Yes,” he said presently, as we entered the long old-fashioned drawing-room upholstered in antique rose-pattern chintz, “I’ve collected in Italy for a good many years. One can pick up bargains, even now, in the less frequented towns, say Ravenna, Verona, Bologna or Rimini; while in Leghorn there are still lots of genuine Sheraton and Chippendale which was imported from England by the English merchants of that time. I once made a splendid find of seventeenth-century English silver – two porringers and some spoons – in the Ghetto in Leghorn.”
I was at the moment looking at a circular Madonna on panel, evidently of the Bolognese school of the cinquecento, hanging at the end of the long pleasant old room when, in glancing round, my eye fell upon two small tables where stood photographs in frames.
In an instant I bent over one and recognised it as that of the girl who had come to me so mysteriously at Shepherd’s Bush.
“That is my daughter,” he remarked.
“Curious,” I said, feigning to reflect. “I think I’ve met her somewhere abroad. Perhaps it was in Italy. Could it have been in Leghorn?”
“You know Leghorn?”
“I’ve been there many times. I know the Camerons, the Davises, the Matthews, and most of the English colony there.”
“Then you may possibly have met her there,” he said. “We have a small flat on the sea-front, and my daughter often plays tennis.”
“Of course!” I exclaimed, as though the mention of tennis brought back to me full recollection of the incident. “It was at tennis that I saw her – last season when I was at the Palace Hotel. I remember now, quite well. Our Mediterranean fleet were lying there at the time, and there were lots of festivities, as there are every summer. Is your daughter now in England?”
“Oh, yes. She’s up in London, but returns to-morrow.”
“And are you going back to Italy soon?” I inquired.
“I hardly know. My movements are never very certain. I’m quite a creature of circumstances, and nowadays drift about with the wind of chance,” he laughed.
“But this is a lovely old place,” I remarked. “If I had it I should certainly not prefer a flat in a sun-baked Italian town, like Leghorn.”
“Circumstances,” he remarked simply, with a mysterious smile upon his grey face.
What, I wondered, was his meaning?
Did he really intend to convey that the circumstances of his dishonourable profession compelled him to hide himself in a small flat in that somewhat obscure town – obscure as far as English life went?
When he learnt that I knew some of his friends in Leghorn he became enthusiastic, and began to discuss the town and its notabilities. What did I think of the English parson? And whether I did not think that seeing the small English congregation the church ought not to be removed to some town with a larger English colony. It was absurd to keep a parson there for half a dozen people.
And while my sharp eyes were busy examining the photographs set among vases of fresh-cut flowers, I made replies and sometimes laughed at his witty criticisms of persons known to both of us in “the Brighton of Italy.”
“What a contrast is the quiet rural life here, with all its old-world English tranquillity, to that of the gay, garish, sun-blanched passeggiata of Leghorn, with its bright-eyed women, its oleanders, its noise, movement, the glare and strident music of the café-chantants, and the brightness of the newly discovered spa,” I said.
He sighed, pursing his lips.
“Yes, Mr Leaf, you are quite right,” he answered. “I love Italy, but I confess I very often long to be back here at Studland, in my own quiet old home. Lucie is always begging me to forsake the Continent and return. But it is impossible – utterly impossible.”
“Why impossible?” I asked, looking into his deeply furrowed face.
“Well – there is a reason,” was his response. “A strong reason, one of health, which induces – nay, compels me to live abroad. And I greatly prefer Italy to any other country.”
Little did he dream that I had that secret document of the Italian Detective Department in my possession, or that I had learnt the truth from my friend Sampson, the friend of the young Chilian Carrera.
We were chatting on, having halted at the open window which looked across the old-fashioned garden with its rose arbours, moss-grown terrace and grey weather-beaten sundial, away to the park beyond, when I suddenly crossed to another table, whereon were other photographs.
One of them I thought I recognised even in the distance.
Yes! I was not mistaken! I took it in my trembling hand with a word of apology, and looked into the picture intently. Sight of it staggered me.
“Who is this?” I asked hoarsely, and my host must, I think, have noticed the great change in my countenance.
“A friend of my daughter’s, I think. Do you know her?”
“I knew her,” I replied in a hard, low tone, for sight of that smiling face brought back to me all the bitter remembrance of a part that I would have fain forgotten. “It is Ella Murray!”
“Ah! – yes, that’s her name. I recollect now,” he said; and I saw by his face that he was interested. “I think they were at school together.”
Again I looked upon the portrait of my dear dead love, my eyes fascinated, for I beheld there, at her throat, the small brooch I had given her on her birthday, a green enamelled heart with two hearts in diamonds entwined upon it.
Those sweet, wide-open eyes, clear blue and wondering like a child’s, gazed out upon me; her well-formed lips were slightly parted, as though she were speaking again, uttering those soft words that had so charmed me when she was mine, and mine only. I recollected the dress, too, one she had worn one night at dinner at the big country-house where we had been fellow-guests. Every feature of that lovely face was indelibly photographed upon my memory. Through those dark years, after that paroxysm of grief that had overtaken me when I discovered her false, I had, sleeping and waking, seen that smiling countenance as before my vision. Even in death Ella was still mine.
That smile! Ah! did it not mock me? Had not Avarice and Death cheated me out of Happiness? A great darkness was over my mind, like the plague of an unending night.
I set my teeth, swallowed the lump that arose in my throat, and with a sigh replaced the photograph upon the table.
“A pretty face,” remarked the man whose police record was in my possession.
“Yes, very,” I remarked casually.
Ah! what a storm of bitter recollections surged through my burning brain.
Had she but lived and loved how different would my own wasted, aimless life have been!
Yes. She was, after all, my dear dead love – my Ella!