William Le Queux

“ Like herself I lived in a clouded atmosphere of rapidly changing circumstances, mysterious plots and unknown evil deeds—truly a world of fear and bewilderment.
Some days later I had driven up to London in the Rolls with Duperré, leaving Rayne and Lola at home, Duperré’s wife being away somewhere on a visit. We took up our quarters at Rayne’s chambers, and next day idled about London together. Just before we went out to dinner Martyn called, and after taking a drink Duperré went out with him, remarking to me that he would be in soon after eleven. ”

“ Rayne, I repeat it,” I said defiantly. “I am not blind to your subtle machinations by which I have become your accomplice.”
He laughed triumphantly in my face.
“You are paid—and well paid for it all. Why should you resent? Are you an idiot?”
“I certainly refuse to be your tool!” I cried furiously.
“You have thrown in your lot with me as one who ventures constantly in big things just as any man who operates on the Stock Exchange. It is good sport. You, George, are a sportsman, as I am. ”

“ As an unwilling assistant of that super-crook whose agents were at work in the various cities of Europe carrying out the amazingly ingenious plans which, with Vincent Duperré, he so carefully formulated in that great old-world library of his at Overstow, I was constantly in peril, for I felt by some inexplicable intuition that the police must, one day or other, obtain sufficient evidence to arrest all of us, Lola included. ”

“ The Sûreté, in combination with the Danish detective service, are still trying to clear up the affair. You and I can do it,” he said; and, after a pause, he looked Rayne straight in the face, and asked: “Shall we? It rests with you!”
Rayne frowned darkly. Never before had I witnessed such an evil look upon the face of any man. I knew that his brain was working swiftly, and I also saw that our visitor was most unwelcome—evidently an accomplice who had managed by some unaccountable means to penetrate the veil of secrecy in which the super-crook had always so successfully enveloped his identity. ”

“ Yet when a man renounces the world and enters the cloisters, he puts aside all jealousies and thought of injury, and lives a life of devotion and of strictest piety. Fra Pacifico was a man I much admired, and whose word I accepted without query.
Next day Lola was inquisitive as to my visit to the monastery, but I was compelled to keep my own counsel, and that evening we all three took the night express to Rome, arriving at the Grand at nine o’clock after a dusty and sleepless journey, for the wagons-lit which run over the Maremma marshes roll and rock until sleep becomes quite impossible. ”

“ When, with Lola and Madame, I returned home a week later and explained the whole of my adventures, Rayne sat for a few moments silent. Then, as I looked, I saw vengeance written upon his face.
“I suspected that she was playing me false, and selling stuff in secret through that fellow Zuccari! She is carrying on the business by herself. I now have proof of it—and I shall take my own steps! You will see!” ”

“ We who live outside the high monastery walls can never understand the delightful, old-world peace that reigns within—that big family of whom the father is the fat Priore, always indulgent and kind to his grown-up children, yet so very severe upon any broken rule.
Fra Pacifico had that evening told me something which had placed me very much upon the alert. I had not been mistaken when I suspected that he might know something of the woman Yolanda Romanelli—the woman whom Rayne had sent me to inquire about—and I felt that I had done well to first inquire of my old friend. ”

“ We took our coffee upstairs in the private room, when Duperré said, à propos of nothing, suddenly looking across at his wife:
“Hargreave may be of great use to us, Hylda.” Then, addressing me again, he said, lowering his voice and glancing at the door:
“In becoming associated with ‘The Golden Face,’ Hargreave, you are more fortunate than you may think. He’s a man who can, and who will, if he likes, help you enormously in all sorts of ways—you will find that you are more to him than a mere chauffeur. ”

“ She shook her head sadly, but still allowing me to hold her soft little hand.
“You must not speak of love,” she whispered. “You are an honest man who has been entrapped and compelled to act dishonestly as you do. I know it all, alas! I—I know——” and she burst into tears. “I have discovered,” she sobbed, “that my father is a thief!”
“We cannot help that, Lola,” I said, in deep sympathy at her distress. ”

“ I can discover nothing—absolutely nothing! Father is so secret, and neither Madame nor he will tell me anything. They only say that their business is no affair of mine. My father has business, no doubt, Mr. Hargreave. From his business he derives his income. ”

“ Rayne was silent for a few seconds. Then he said in quite a changed and genial tone:
“I am much mystified at your visit, Signor Gori, for I certainly have no knowledge of you. But the hour is late. If you are staying in the neighborhood could you call again at noon to-morrow, when we will go further into this tangled affair? We seem to be at cross-purposes to-night.”
“As you wish,” replied the visitor, bowing with exquisite politeness. “I am staying at the Fleece Hotel, at Thirsk, and I have motored out here. To-morrow at noon I will call upon you.” ”

“ I saw that I was dealing with a clever thief who carried on his criminal activities under the guise of a dealer of wines.
“Yes, signore,” he said. “I know the Marchesa. She is a leader of smart society, both here and in Naples. During the war she spent a large sum of money in establishing her fine hospital out at Porta Milvio. She was foremost in arranging charity concerts, bazaars, and other things in aid of those blinded at the war. Could such a wealthy patriotic woman, whose husband is one of Italy’s most famous admirals, possibly be anything other than honest and upright?” ”

“ I went through the war—that hell at Vimy, and I did my best for King and Country. Now, when love happens and all that life means to a man is just within my grasp, I have to retire to ignominy or death. I prefer the latter.”
Next morning he stepped from the train at Victoria and drove to his rooms in Bennett Street, St. James’s. He was still obsessed by those same thoughts which had prevented him from sleeping for the past week. His man, Sanford, who had been his batman in France, met him with a cheery smile, and after a bath and a shave he went round to his business in Bond Street. ”

“ We have lots of such in England to-day. Ask the chef-de-réception of any of our smartest hotels, and they will reel off the names of half a dozen or so elderly bachelors, widowers or wife-quarrelers with huge incomes who prefer to pass along the line of least resistance in domesticity—the private suite in an up-to-date hotel.
Mr. Gordon Lloyd was one of such, and it seemed that Rudolph Rayne, who now treated me with the greatest intimacy because he saw that he had drawn me so completely into his net, had become his dearest friend. ”

“ After due consideration I decided that we should move from Naples to the pretty little town of Salerno at the other end of the blue bay, and there at the Hôtel d’Angleterre, facing the sapphire sea, I spent several delightful days with the girl I so passionately loved.
“I cannot see the reason for all this inquiry, Mr. Hargreave,” she said one evening, as we were walking by the moonlit sea after we had dined and Madame had retired. “Why should father wish you to watch the Marchesa so narrowly? How can she concern him? They are strangers.” ”

“ Suddenly from the end compartment of the car Duperré came forth. As a perfect stranger he apologized in French as he passed us and walked to the little compartment at the end of the car where he ordered a drink from the conductor.
Hence old Mr. Blumenfeld was in ignorance that Vincent had any knowledge of us, or that Signorina Lacava, who was another of the passengers, was our friend. Yet the thin-faced valet who had brought up my early cup of tea when we had stayed at Bradbourne continually hovered about his master. ”

“ The keen grey-eyed middle-aged man was smoking a cigar and with him was Madame, whose cleverness as a crook was only equalled by that of her husband.
“Well, Hargreave!” exclaimed Rayne. “I hope you had a nice time at Biarritz, eh? Well, I want you to go on a further little holiday down to Eastbourne. Drive the Rolls down to the Grand Hotel there and stay as a gentleman of leisure.”
“I’m always that nowadays,” I laughed.
“Stay there under the name of George Cottingham,” he went on, “and spend rather freely, so as to give yourself a good appearance. You understand?” ”

“ Hargreave! You will find out all you want to know in due course. So possess yourself in patience and act always with foresight as well as with discretion.”
I chanced to raise my eyes at that moment, when I noticed that a well-dressed, black-mustached Frenchman, who wore white spats, while passing along the terrace of the fine al fresco restaurant had halted a second to peer into Madame’s face, no doubt struck by her handsome features. She noticed it also but turned her head, and spoke to me of something else. A woman knows instinctively when she is being admired. ”

“ Most men who are personal friends of millionaires manage to extract some little point of knowledge which, if used in the right way and with discretion, will often result in considerable financial gain. Indeed, I have often thought that around a millionaire there is spread a halo of prosperity which invests all those who enter it and brings to them good fortune.
It was evident that the great financier regarded Rudolph Rayne as his friend, for he promised to pay us a visit at Overstow in return. ”

“ None who met him would have ever dreamed that he was the shrewd, crafty cosmopolitan whose evil machinations and devilish ingenuity made themselves felt in all the capitals of Europe, and whose word was law to certain dangerous characters who would not hesitate to take human life if it were really necessary to evade arrest.
His outstanding cleverness, however, was that he never revealed his own identity to those who actually carried out his devilish schemes. ”

“ Besides, you will spend money and make pretense of being rich. And let me give you a valuable tip. On the first evening you arrive at the hotel call the valet, give him a pound note and tell him to go out and buy a pound bottle of eau-de-Cologne to put in your bath. There’s nothing that gets round an hotel so quickly as wanton extravagance like that. The guests hear of it through the servants, and everyone is impressed by your wealth.”
I laughed. Only a man with such a brain as Rudolph Rayne could have thought of such a ruse to inspire confidence. ”

“ In the whole affair Rayne, whose master-brain was responsible for the ingenious coup, remained with clean hands and ready at any moment to prove his own innocence.
The original plan of tossing out the sixty thousand pounds’ worth of bonds to Tracy, who was waiting with his three warning lights, failed because of old Blumenfeld’s sleeplessness, but it was substituted by a far more secretive yet simple plan—one never even dreamed of by the astute police attached to the Paris, Lyons and Mediterranean Railway. It being daylight at Lyons, the blinds were up! ”

“ One fact is plain, that you, like myself, are an agent of the man of abnormal brain known as ‘The Golden Face,’ but I tell you I refuse to become a jewel-thief.”
“Very well, if that is your irrevocable decision I will return to-morrow and report,” he answered in very good English, though he was typically Italian. “But I warn you that mischief is meant if you do not obey. Duperré told me so. Like myself you are paid to act as directed and to keep a silent tongue. ”

“ Duperré watched the expression of surprise upon my face as he packed the whole of the broken jewelry into the dog.
“Now what I want you to do, Hargreave,” he said, “is to drown Lu Chang in the Seine. Lots of people in Paris, who are not lovers of dogs, are flinging them into the river because of the new excessive tax upon domestic pets. You will just toss Lu Chang over the Pont Neuf. The police can’t interfere, even though they see you. You will only have put the dog out of the world rather than pay the double tax.” ”

“ But if actually a prince, why did he carry a passport?
There is no good hotel at Sofia. The best is called the Grand Hôtel de Bulgarie, kept by a pleasant old lady, and in this we found ourselves next night installed. He, of course, gave his name as Vassos, and to all intents and purposes was more of a stranger in the Bulgarian capital than I myself was, for I had been there previously once just before the war.
Now Rayne had given me a letter of introduction to a certain Nicolas Titeroff, who contrived rather mysteriously to get me elected to the smart diplomats’ club—the Union—during my stay. ”

“ Salerno is only thirty miles from Naples, therefore I often traveled to the latter place—indeed, almost daily.
In Italian they have an old saying, “A chi veglia tutto si rivela” (“To him who remains watchful everything becomes revealed”) . That had long been my motto. With Lola and Madame Duperré I was in Italy in order to learn what I could concerning the woman whom Fra Pacifico had so bitterly denounced. ”