“Just step in here one moment,” said the man in the grey suit. “I want to ask you a question.” And he conducted me to a small office at the farther end of the platform, the bureau of the Italian police.
“Now who are you?” he asked, fixing me with his keen dark eyes, while the two detectives, who had evidently been expecting my arrival and identified me from the telegraphed description, stood by watching.
“My name is Sampson—Samuel Sampson,” was my prompt reply, for during the whole of the previous day I had gradually concocted2 a story in readiness for any emergency.
“Oh!” exclaimed the delegato in disbelief. “And what are you?”
“Under-steward on board the Italia of the Anchor Line between Naples and New York. I landed yesterday morning at Leghorn, and am going home on a holiday to London. Why?” I asked, with feigned3 surprise.
“You left Rome yesterday,” he said, “and your name is Godfrey Leaf,”—he pronounced it “Lif.”
“Oh!” I laughed, “that’s something new. What else? If you doubt me here’s my passport. It’s an English passport with the Italian visé, and I fancy it ought to be good enough for you.”
And I handed him Sammy Sampson’s passport which had been in the writing-book in my suit-case for close upon a year—ever since he and I had taken a short trip to San Sebastian, over the Spanish border.
The police inspector4 opened the document, glanced at the visa of the Italian Consulate-General in London, and carefully spelt the name of Sampson.
“There is no description or profession,” he remarked dubiously7.
“Well,” I said, “I suppose that is not the first English passport you’ve seen, is it? But I don’t think you have ever seen one different, or with fuller detail than that!”
“Then you are not Godfrey ‘Lif’?” he asked, still dubious6.
“I’m what I’ve already told you. What do you suspect of me? I’m an Englishman travelling home, I’ve committed no crime or offence against the law, and I don’t see why I should suffer this indignity8! But if you desire to be satisfied, you are perfectly9 at liberty to search me and my belongings10.” And I handed him my bundle.
“We’ve already seen it when it was examined in the dogana,” remarked one of the detectives.
My revolver licence, card-case, cigarette-case and other articles that might betray me I had been careful to put in my trunk which was registered through to London. Therefore I had thoroughly11 assumed my friend’s identity. English passports are so vague and lax that the greatest abuses are often committed with them.
I was quick to notice that my prompt reply to the questions rather nonplussed12 my interrogator13. He took the official telegram from the table, read what it contained very carefully, and then looked long and earnestly at me.
I remained firm and unmoved, well knowing that all my future happiness depended upon my calm indifference14. Yet indifference at such a moment was a matter of extreme difficulty.
He began to put other questions to me, in the hope, it appeared, of making me commit myself to a falsehood. But I was now thoroughly on the alert, and gave quick, unhesitating replies.
Had the inspector been an Englishman he would probably have detected by my speech that I was not an under-steward, but being Italian he was thus handicapped. Indeed, so circumstantial an account did I give of getting two months’ leave from my ship to visit my mother in London, and in addition presenting a passport perfectly in order, that just before the train was leaving for France he and his companions, filled with doubt as to whether I was actually the person wanted, allowed me to walk out again upon the platform—a free man!
Five minutes later I had mounted into an empty third-class compartment15, but I dare not breathe before the train slowly moved away in the “direction de Paris.”
The terrible anxiety of those moments will surely live with me until my dying day, for I had both love and life at stake; my own love, my well-beloved’s life!
After thirty hours of slow travelling and constant stoppages and shuntings I arrived at the Gare de Lyon, and again resuming the luxury of a collar and cravat16 I purchased a ready-made suit of blue serge, a hard felt hat and a few necessaries, for no longer I needed the disguise of a workman.
Contrary to my usual custom of going to the Grand, I put up at the Athenée, which is greatly patronised by Americans, and where I had a New York friend staying at that moment. Then, after dinner, I telegraphed to Leghorn to Lucie Miller17 telling her that I had left Italy, and that if she wished to communicate with me she should write or telegraph. My idea was that if her father had been arrested, as he most probably had been, she would certainly require the assistance of some friend, and might probably prefer me. Of course she would not willingly admit to me her father’s disgrace, yet by her own actions I should be pretty well able to judge what had taken place.
I was eager to be back near Ella, yet before I crossed to England I determined18 to await a reply to my message to Lucie.
For three days I remained in suspense19, idling with my American friend in cafés and restaurants, and showing him Paris in a mild kind of way.
I had searched the French and English newspapers diligently20 to learn any details of the affair at the Villa21 Verde, but in vain, until one evening in the reading-room of the hotel I came across a copy of the Corriere della Sera, the journal of Milan, in which was a long telegram from Rome, headed: “The Escape of the Minister Nardini: Mysterious Tragedy at the Villa Verde.”
In breathless eagerness I read how the police, on going in the morning to relieve the guard placed at the villa, found the unfortunate man lying dead with a knife-wound in his heart. Thieves had evidently entered the house by the window of the study which looked out upon the roadway, for the iron bars had been filed through and a space made sufficient to admit a man. Nothing, however, had been taken, as far as could be ascertained22. The study was in complete order, and the police theory was that the man in charge, hearing the noise, had entered the room only to be confronted by several men. He then fled across the house intending to get out and raise the alarm, when he was overtaken in the passage and stabbed.
The theory was, of course, quite a natural one.
The thieves had, it seemed, before their escape placed the room in order, closed the secret cupboard, replaced the panel, and put down the carpet as they had found it. The action of reclosing the panel had, of course, released the bolts that held the door, but they had already, by some means or other, cut through the bars. Probably they escaped without knowing that the door had been automatically released.
In any case they were clear away with a sum amounting to many thousands of pounds sterling—probably the greatest haul Miller had made in all his career.
There was, however, a second telegram which stated that two carabineers patrolling the road near the villa had stopped and questioned a mysterious Englishman who was now suspected to be one of the assassins, and after whom the police were in active search.
Miller and his companions were actually scot-free—and with their enormous booty!
No word was published regarding the mysterious discovery previously23 made in that house. The police were still hushing up the affair that was so shrouded24 in mystery, yet at the same time they evidently connected the two curious circumstances, and regarded them as a problem altogether beyond solution. Little, however, did they dream that the missing man’s secret hoard25 had been carried off in its entirety!
Next morning, when the waiter brought my coffee, a telegram lay upon the tray. It was from Lucie, despatched the previous day from the Swiss frontier at Chiasso, announcing that she and her father were on their way to Paris and would arrive that night at the H?tel de Grand, which proved to be a modest little place in the Rue26 de la Michodière, near the Boulevard des Italiens.
Miller was escaping with those thick packets of thousand-franc notes which I had seen him secure, though Lucie was, of course, in entire ignorance of what had occurred.
Next morning I anxiously sought her. She came to me in the little salon27 of the unpretending hotel, a neat figure in her blue serge travelling-dress and smart little toque. Greeting me enthusiastically, she exclaimed:—
“How suddenly you went from Leghorn! I sent down to the Palace Hotel, for I wanted to see you again, but you had gone. I wanted to tell you that I’ve heard from Ella. The tenant28 of Wichenford has been recalled suddenly to America, and she and Mr Murray are back there for a little while. I thought you would like to know this.”
“Know it? Of course I do. I shall leave Paris to-night,” I said, glad to have news of my well-beloved.
“We also leave to-night. We are on our way back to Studland. Father wired me to meet him in Milan, and I did so. Then he explained that we were going home again, and that we should not return to Italy till the spring.”
He would probably never return to Italy, I thought, though I said nothing, except to congratulate her upon the prospect29 of spending a few months in Dorsetshire at the old home she loved so well.
At that moment Miller himself entered, surprised to find me there, but shaking my hand warmly said:—“Why, my dear Leaf! who would have thought to find you here? I believed you were in England.”
“Miss Lucie sent me word that you were passing through Paris,” I explained, “so it was my duty to call and pay my compliments.”
“We’ve just been on a flying visit to Italy,” he said. “I had some rather pressing affairs to attend to in Rome. To-night, however, we go back to Studland.”
“Mr Leaf is also crossing with us,” remarked his daughter.
“Oh! excellent!” exclaimed the man whom I had last seen cramming30 those ill-gotten notes into his pockets, his face flushed with the eager lust31 for wealth, his voice raised loudly in angry protest against an equal division of the booty. “We’ll meet at the Gare du Nord, eh?”
Calm, grey-faced, distinguished-looking and of gentlemanly bearing, surely no one would have ever dreamed that his character was such as it really had been proved to be. He offered me a cigarette, lit one himself, and all three of us went out for a stroll along the Boulevard and the Rue de la Paix. We lunched together in one of the little restaurants in the Palais Royal, but neither by word nor deed did Miller display any fear of recognition.
I wondered in what direction Gavazzi had fled; and would have given a good deal to know how they had managed to get through those formidable bars which I had believed unbreakable.
Lucie’s father being with us the whole time, I had no opportunity of speaking to her alone. At three o’clock I left them at the hotel, and at nine that evening joined them in the night-mail for Calais and London.
On board the steamer, Miller went below, while I got Lucie a deck-chair, wrapped her in an oilskin borrowed from a seaman32, and sat beside her.
The night was a perfect one, with a bright full moon shining over the Channel, and as we sat we watched the flashing light of Calais slowly disappearing at the stern.
“Your father seems to be returning quite unexpectedly to England,” I said presently, after she had been admiring the reflection of the moon upon the glittering waters.
“Yes. I was quite surprised. He gave me no warning. Poor old dad is always so very erratic33. He told me to meet him at the Metropole in Milan, and hardly gave me time to get there. I had to leave the house within an hour of receiving his wire.”
“Did he telegraph from Rome?”
“No. From Ancona, on the Adriatic.”
So he had escaped at once to the other side of Italy without returning to Rome.
“What has Ella told you in her letter?”
“Nothing more than what I have already explained. She makes no mention of—of the man whom we need not name.”
“I am now going home to expose him,” I said determinedly34. “I have fully5 considered all the risks, and am prepared to run them.”
“Ah!” she cried, turning to me in quick alarm, “do not do anything rash, I beg of you, Mr Leaf! There is some mystery—a great mystery which I am, as yet, unable to fathom—but to speak at this juncture35 would assuredly only implicate36 her. Of that I feel sure from certain information already in my possession.”
“You’ve already told me that. But surely you don’t think I can stand by and see her go headlong to her ruin without stretching forth37 a hand to save her. It is my duty, not only as her lover but also as a man. The fellow is a thief and a scoundrel.”
When we love much we ourselves are nothing, and what we love is all.
“I only beg of you to be patient and be silent—at least for the present,” she urged.
Was she in fear, I wondered, lest any revelation I made should implicate her father? Was it possible that she had any suspicion that he was at that moment seeking asylum38 in his comfortable English home?
All the disjointed admissions which she had made regarding her acquaintance with the dead Minister for Justice, her appeal to him to speak the truth and clear her of some mysterious stigma39, and her mention of the Villa Verde out at Tivoli crowded upon me. When we suffer very much everything that smiles in the sun seems cruel.
Beneath that beautiful face, pale in the bright moonbeams shining upon it, was mystery—a great unfathomable mystery. Was she not daughter of one of the cleverest thieves in Europe? And, if so, could she not most probably keep a secret if one were entrusted40 to her?
For some ten minutes or so I was silent. The engines throbbed41, the dark waters hissed42 past, and swiftly we were heading for the lights of Dover.
At any moment Miller, who had gone below to get a whisky and soda43 with a friend he had met, a gentlemanly-looking Englishman, might return. I wondered whether it were judicious44 to tell her one fact.
At last I spoke45.
“You recollect46, Miss Miller, that you once mentioned the Villa Verde, at Tivoli, where, I think, Nardini lived the greater part of the year?”
“Yes,” was her rather mechanical answer. “Why? What causes you to recollect that?”
“Because—well, because the other day I learnt something in confidence concerning it.”
“Concerning the villa!” she gasped47, starting and turning to me with a changed expression of fear and apprehension48. “What—what were you told? Who told you?”
“Well, probably it is a fact of which you are unaware49, for only the police know it, and they have hushed it up,” I said. “After the flight of Nardini the police who went to search the villa and seize his effects made a very startling discovery.”
“Discovery! What did they find?” she inquired eagerly, her face now blanched50 to the lips.
“The body of a young woman—the young Englishwoman who was your friend!” I said, with my eyes fixed51 upon her.
She started forward, glaring at me open-mouthed. She tried to speak, but no sound escaped her lips. Her gloved hands were trembling, her dark eyes staring out of her head.
“Then the police have searched!” she gasped at last.
“They know the truth! I—I am—”
And she fell back again into the long deck-chair, rigid52 and insensible.
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收听单词发音
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1
fetters
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| n.脚镣( fetter的名词复数 )；束缚v.给…上脚镣，束缚( fetter的第三人称单数 ) | |
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2
concocted
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| v.将（尤指通常不相配合的）成分混合成某物( concoct的过去式和过去分词 )；调制；编造；捏造 | |
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feigned
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| a.假装的，不真诚的 | |
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inspector
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| n.检查员，监察员，视察员 | |
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fully
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| adv.完全地，全部地，彻底地；充分地 | |
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dubious
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| adj.怀疑的，无把握的；有问题的，靠不住的 | |
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dubiously
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| adv.可疑地，怀疑地 | |
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indignity
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| n.侮辱，伤害尊严，轻蔑 | |
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perfectly
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| adv.完美地，无可非议地，彻底地 | |
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belongings
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| n.私人物品，私人财物 | |
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thoroughly
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| adv.完全地，彻底地，十足地 | |
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nonplussed
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| adj.不知所措的，陷于窘境的v.使迷惑( nonplus的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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interrogator
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| n.讯问者；审问者；质问者；询问器 | |
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indifference
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| n.不感兴趣，不关心，冷淡，不在乎 | |
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compartment
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| n.卧车包房，隔间；分隔的空间 | |
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16
cravat
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| n.领巾，领结；v.使穿有领结的服装，使结领结 | |
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miller
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| n.磨坊主 | |
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determined
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| adj.坚定的；有决心的 | |
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suspense
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| n.（对可能发生的事）紧张感，担心，挂虑 | |
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diligently
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| ad.industriously;carefully | |
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villa
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| n.别墅，城郊小屋 | |
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ascertained
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| v.弄清，确定，查明( ascertain的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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previously
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| adv.以前，先前（地） | |
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24
shrouded
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| v.隐瞒( shroud的过去式和过去分词 )；保密 | |
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25
hoard
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| n./v.窖藏，贮存，囤积 | |
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rue
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| n.懊悔，芸香，后悔；v.后悔，悲伤，懊悔 | |
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27
salon
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| n.[法]沙龙；客厅；营业性的高级服务室 | |
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28
tenant
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| n.承租人；房客；佃户；v.租借，租用 | |
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prospect
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| n.前景，前途；景色，视野 | |
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30
cramming
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| n.塞满，填鸭式的用功v.塞入( cram的现在分词 )；填塞；塞满；（为考试而）死记硬背功课 | |
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31
lust
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| n.性(淫)欲；渴(欲)望；vi.对…有强烈的欲望 | |
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32
seaman
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| n.海员，水手，水兵 | |
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33
erratic
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| adj.古怪的，反复无常的，不稳定的 | |
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34
determinedly
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| adv.决意地；坚决地，坚定地 | |
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35
juncture
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| n.时刻，关键时刻，紧要关头 | |
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36
implicate
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| vt.使牵连其中，涉嫌 | |
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forth
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| adv.向前；向外，往外 | |
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asylum
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| n.避难所，庇护所，避难 | |
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39
stigma
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| n.耻辱，污名；(花的)柱头 | |
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40
entrusted
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| v.委托，托付( entrust的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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41
throbbed
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| 抽痛( throb的过去式和过去分词 )； （心脏、脉搏等）跳动 | |
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42
hissed
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| 发嘶嘶声( hiss的过去式和过去分词 )； 发嘘声表示反对 | |
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43
soda
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| n.苏打水；汽水 | |
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44
judicious
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| adj.明智的，明断的，能作出明智决定的 | |
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45
spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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46
recollect
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| v.回忆，想起，记起，忆起，记得 | |
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47
gasped
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| v.喘气( gasp的过去式和过去分词 )；喘息；倒抽气；很想要 | |
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48
apprehension
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| n.理解，领悟；逮捕，拘捕；忧虑 | |
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49
unaware
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| a.不知道的，未意识到的 | |
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50
blanched
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| v.使变白( blanch的过去式 )；使（植物）不见阳光而变白；酸洗（金属）使有光泽；用沸水烫（杏仁等）以便去皮 | |
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51
fixed
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| adj.固定的，不变的，准备好的；(计算机)固定的 | |
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52
rigid
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| adj.严格的，死板的；刚硬的，僵硬的 | |
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