“And Miss Granard and I,” continued my lady, quite unblushingly, “have
been travelling all over the Continent in order to try and secure some
rare specimens.”
“Indeed,” said Sir Anthony. “Have you found anything very wonderful?”
“We certainly have discovered some rare works of art,” replied Lady
Molly, “have we not, Mary? Now the two Englehearts we bought at
Budapest are undoubtedly quite unique.”
“Engleheart--and at Budapest!” remarked Sir Anthony. “I thought I knew
the collections at most of the great Continental cities, but I
certainly have no recollection of such treasures in the Hungarian
capital.”
“Oh, they were only purchased two years ago, and have only been shown
to the public recently,” remarked Lady Molly. “There was originally a
set of eight, so the comptroller, Mr. Pulszky, informed me. He bought
them from an English collector whose name I have now forgotten, and he
is very proud of them, but they cost the country a great deal more
money than it could afford, and in order somewhat to recoup himself
Mr. Pulszky sold two out of the eight at, I must say, a very stiff
price.”
While she was talking I could not help noticing the strange glitter in
her eyes. Then a curious smothered sound broke upon my ear. I turned
and saw Mrs. Frewin looking with glowing and dilated eyes at the
charming picture presented by Lady Molly.
“I should like to show you my purchases,” said the latter to Sir
Anthony. “One or two foreign connoisseurs have seen the two miniatures
and declare them to be the finest in existence. Mary,” she added,
turning to me, “would you be so kind as to run up to my room and get
me the small sealed packet which is at the bottom of my dressing-case?
Here are the keys.”
A little bewildered, yet guessing by her manner that I had a part to
play, I took the keys from her and went up to her room. In her
dressing-case I certainly found a small, square, flat packet, and with
that in my hand I prepared to go downstairs again. I had just locked
the bedroom door when I was suddenly confronted by a tall, graceful
woman dressed in deep black, whom I at once recognised as the
Honourable Mrs. Frewin.
“You are Miss Granard?” she said quickly and excitedly; her voice was
tremulous and she seemed a prey to the greatest possible excitement.
Without waiting for my reply she continued eagerly:
“Miss Granard, there is no time to be more explicit, but I give you my
word, the word of a very wretched, heart-broken woman, that my very
life depends upon my catching a glimpse of the contents of the parcel
that you now have in your hand.”
“But----” I murmured, hopelessly bewildered.
“There is no ‘but,’” she replied. “It is a matter of life and death.
Here are £200, Miss Granard, if you will let me handle that packet,”
and with trembling hands she drew a bundle of bank-notes from her
reticule.
I hesitated, not because I had any notion of acceding to Mrs. Frewin’s
request, but because I did not quite know how I ought to act at this
strange juncture, when a pleasant, mellow voice broke in suddenly:
“You may take the money, Mary, if you wish. You have my permission to
hand the packet over to this lady,” and Lady Molly, charming, graceful
and elegant in her beautiful directoire gown, stood smiling some few
feet away, with Hankin just visible in the gloom of the corridor.
She advanced towards us, took the small packet from my hands, and held
it out towards Mrs. Frewin.
“Will you open it?” she said, “or shall I?”
Mrs. Frewin did not move. She stood as if turned to stone. Then with
dexterous fingers my lady broke the seals of the packet and drew from
it a few sheets of plain white cardboard and a thin piece of
match-boarding.
“There!” said Lady Molly, fingering the bits of cardboard while she
kept her fine large eyes fixed on Mrs. Frewin; “£200 is a big price
to pay for a sight of these worthless things.”
“Then this was a vulgar trick,” said Mrs. Frewin, drawing herself up
with an air which did not affect Lady Molly in the least.
“A trick, certainly,” she replied with her winning smile, “vulgar, if
you will call it so--pleasant to us all, Mrs. Frewin, since you so
readily fell into it.”
“Well, and what are you going to do next?”
“Report the matter to my chief,” said Lady Molly, quietly. “We have
all been very severely blamed for not discovering sooner the truth
about the disappearance of the Frewin miniatures.”
“You don’t know the truth now,” retorted Mrs. Frewin.
“Oh, yes, I do,” replied Lady Molly, still smiling. “I know that two
years ago your son, Mr. Lionel Frewin, was in terrible monetary
difficulties. There was something unavowable, which he dared not tell
his father. You had to set to work to find money somehow. You had no
capital at your own disposal, and you wished to save your son from the
terrible consequences of his own folly. It was soon after M. de
Colinville’s visit. Your husband had had his first apoplectic seizure;
his mind and eyesight were somewhat impaired. You are a clever artist
yourself, and you schemed out a plan whereby you carefully copied the
priceless miniatures and then entrusted them to your son for sale to
the Art Museum at Budapest, where there was but little likelihood of
their being seen by anyone who knew they had belonged to your husband.
English people do not stay more than one night there, at the Hotel
Hungaria. Your copies were works of art in themselves, and you had no
difficulty in deceiving your husband in the state of mind he then was,
but when he lay dying you realised that his will would inevitably be
proved, wherein he bequeathed the miniatures to Mr. James Hyam, and
that these would have to be valued for probate. Frightened now that
the substitution would be discovered, you devised the clever comedy of
the burglary at Blatchley, which, in the circumstances, could never be
brought home to you or your son. I don’t know where you subsequently
concealed the spurious Engleheart miniatures which you calmly took out
of the library and hid away during the night of your husband’s death,
but no doubt our men will find that out,” she added quietly, “now that
they are on the track.”
With a frightened shriek Mrs. Frewin turned as if she would fly, but
Lady Molly was too quick for her, and barred the way. Then, with that
wonderful charm of manner and that innate kindliness which always
characterised her, she took hold of the unfortunate woman’s wrist.
“Let me give you a word of advice,” she said gently. “We at the Yard
will be quite content with a confession from you, which will clear us
of negligence and satisfy us that the crime has been brought home to
its perpetrator. After that try and enter into an arrangement with
your husband’s legatee, Mr. James Hyam. Make a clean breast of the
whole thing to him and offer him full monetary compensation. For the
sake of the family he won’t refuse. He would have nothing to gain by
bruiting the whole thing abroad; and for his own sake and that of his
late uncle, who was so good to him, I don’t think you would find him
hard to deal with.”
Mrs. Frewin paused awhile, undecided and still defiant. Then her
attitude softened; she turned and looked full at the beautiful, kind
eyes turned eagerly up to hers, and pressing Lady Molly’s tiny hand in
both her own she whispered:
“I will take your advice. God bless you.”
She was gone, and Lady Molly called Hankin to her side.
“Until we have that confession, Hankin,” she said, with the quiet
manner she always adopted where matters connected with her work were
concerned, “Mum’s the word.”
“Ay, and after that, too, my lady,” replied Hankin, earnestly.
You see, she could do anything she liked with the men, and I, of
course, was her slave.
Now we have got the confession, Mrs. Frewin is on the best of terms
with Mr. James Hyam, who has behaved very well about the whole thing,
and the public has forgotten all about the mystery of the Frewin
miniatures.
III.
THE IRISH-TWEED COAT
It all began with the murder of Mr. Andrew Carrthwaite, at Palermo.
He had been found dead in the garden of his villa just outside the
town, with a stiletto between his shoulder blades and a piece of rough
Irish tweed, obviously torn from his assailant’s coat, clutched
tightly in his hand.
All that was known of Mr. Carrthwaite over here was that he was a
Yorkshireman, owner of some marble works in Sicily, a man who employed
a great many hands; and that, unlike most employers of labour over
there, he had a perfect horror of the many secret societies and
Socialist clubs which abound in that part of the world. He would not
become a slave to the ever-growing tyranny of the Mafia and its
kindred associations, and therefore he made it a hard and fast rule
that no workman employed by him, from the foremost to the meanest
hand, should belong to any society, club, or trade union of any sort
or kind.
At first, robbery was thought to have been the sole object of the
crime, for Mr. Carrthwaite’s gold watch, marked with his initials
“A. C.,” and his chain were missing, but the Sicilian police were soon
inclined to the belief that this was merely a blind, and that personal
spite and revenge were at the bottom of that dastardly outrage.
One clue, remember, had remained in the possession of the authorities.
This was the piece of rough Irish tweed, found in the murdered man’s
hand.
Within twenty-four hours a dozen witnesses were prepared to swear that
that fragment of cloth was part of a coat habitually worn by Mr.
Carrthwaite’s English overseer, Mr. Cecil Shuttleworth. It appears
that this young man had lately, in defiance of the rigid rules
prescribed by his employer, joined a local society--semi-social,
semi-religious--which came under the ban of the old Yorkshireman’s
prejudices.
Apparently there had been several bitter quarrels between Mr.
Carrthwaite and young Shuttleworth, culminating in one tempestuous
scene, witnessed by the former’s servants at his villa; and although
these people did not understand the actual words that passed between
the two Englishmen, it was pretty clear that they amounted to an
ultimatum on the one side and defiance on the other. The dismissal of
the overseer followed immediately, and that same evening Mr.
Carrthwaite was found murdered in his garden.
Mind you--according to English ideas--the preliminary investigations
in that mysterious crime were hurried through in a manner which we
should think unfair to the accused. It seemed from the first as if the
Sicilian police had wilfully made up their minds that Shuttleworth was
guilty. For instance, although
[IMAGE: images/img055.jpg
CAPTION: “He had been found dead in the garden of his villa”]
so many people were prepared to swear that the young English overseer
had often worn a coat of which the piece found in the murdered man’s
hand was undoubtedly a torn fragment, yet the coat itself was not
found among his effects, neither were his late master’s watch and
chain.
Nevertheless, the young man was arrested within a few hours of the
murder, and--after the formalities of the preliminary
“instruction”--was duly committed to stand his trial on the capital
charge.
It was about this time that I severed my official connection with the
Yard. Lady Molly now employed me as her private secretary, and I was
working with her one day in the study of our snug little flat in Maida
Vale, when our trim servant came in to us with a card and a letter on
a salver.
Lady Molly glanced at the card, then handed it across to me. It bore
the name: Mr. Jeremiah Shuttleworth.
The letter was from the chief.
“Not much in it,” she commented, glancing rapidly at its contents.
“The chief only says, ‘This is the father of the man who is charged
with the Palermo murder. As obstinate as a mule, but you have my
permission to do what he wants.’ Emily, show the gentleman in,” she
added.
The next moment a short, thick-set man entered our little study. He
had sandy hair and a freckled skin; there was a great look of
determination in the square face and a fund of dogged obstinacy in the
broad, somewhat heavy jaw. In response to Lady Molly’s invitation he
sat down and began with extraordinary abruptness:
“I suppose you know what I have come about--er--miss?” he suggested.
“Well!” she replied, holding up his own card, “I can guess.”
“My son, miss--I mean ma’am,” he said in a husky voice. “He is
innocent. I swear it by the living----”
He checked himself, obviously ashamed of this outburst; then he
resumed more calmly.
“Of course, there’s the business about the coat, and that coat did
belong to my son, but----”
“Well, yes?” asked Lady Molly, for he had paused again, as if waiting
to be encouraged in his narrative, “what about that coat?”
“It has been found in London, miss,” he replied quietly. “The fiendish
brutes who committed the crime thought out this monstrous way of
diverting attention from themselves by getting hold of my son’s coat
and making the actual assassin wear it, in case he was espied in the
gloom.”
There was silence in the little study for awhile. I was amazed, aghast
at the suggestion put forward by that rough north-countryman, that
sorely stricken father who spoke with curious intensity of language
and of feeling. Lady Molly was the first to break the solemn silence.
“What makes you think, Mr. Shuttleworth, that the assassination of Mr.
Carrthwaite was the work of a gang of murderers?” she asked.
“I know Sicily,” he replied simply. “My boy’s mother was a native of
Messina. The place is riddled with secret societies, murdering,
anarchical clubs: organisations against which Mr. Carrthwaite waged
deadly warfare. It is one of these--the Mafia, probably--that decreed
that Mr. Carrthwaite should be done away with. They could not do with
such a powerful and hard-headed enemy.”
“You may be right, Mr. Shuttleworth, but tell me more about the coat.”
“Well, that’ll be damning proof against the blackguards, anyway. I am
on the eve of a second marriage, miss--ma’am,” continued the man with
seeming irrelevance. “The lady is a widow. Mrs. Tadworth is her
name--but her father was an Italian named Badeni, a connection of my
first wife’s, and that’s how I came to know him and his daughter. You
know Leather Lane, don’t you? It might be in Italy, for Italian’s the
only language one hears about there. Badeni owned a house in Bread
Street, Leather Lane, and let lodgings to his fellow-countrymen there;
this business my future wife still carries on. About a week ago two
men arrived at the house, father and son, so they said, who wanted a
cheap bedroom; all their meals, including breakfast, they would take
outside, and would be out, moreover, most of the day.
“It seems that they had often lodged at Badeni’s before--the old
reprobate no doubt was one of their gang--and when they understood
that Mrs. Tadworth was their former friend’s daughter they were quite
satisfied.
“They gave their name as Piatti, and told Mrs. Tadworth that they came
from Turin. But I happened to hear them talking on the stairs, and I
knew that they were Sicilians, both of them.
“You may well imagine that just now everything hailing from Sicily is
of vital importance to me, and somehow I suspected those two men from
the very first. Mrs. Tadworth is quite at one with me in wanting to
move heaven and earth to prove the innocence of my boy. She watched
those people for me as a cat would watch a mouse. The older man
professed to be very fond of gardening, and presently he obtained Mrs.
Tadworth’s permission to busy himself in the little strip of barren
ground at the back of the house. This she told me last night whilst we
were having supper together in her little parlour. Somehow I seemed to
get an inspiration like. The Piattis had gone out together as usual
for their evening meal. I got a spade and went out into the strip of
garden. I worked for about an hour, and then my heart gave one big
leap--my spade had met a certain curious, soft resistance--the next
moment I was working away with hands and nails, and soon unearthed a
coat--_the_ coat, miss,” he continued, unable now to control his
excitement, “with the bit torn out of the back, and in the pocket the
watch and chain belonging to the murdered man, for they bear the
initials ‘A. C.’ The fiendish brutes! I knew it--I knew it, and now I
can prove the innocence of my boy!”
Again there was a pause. I was too much absorbed in the palpitating
narrative to attempt to breathe a word, and I knew that Lady Molly was
placidly waiting until the man had somewhat recovered from his
vehement outburst.
“Of course, you can prove your boy’s innocence now,” she said, smiling
encouragingly into his flushed face. “But what have you done with the
coat?”
“Left it buried where I found it,” he replied more calmly. “They must
not suspect that I am on their track.”
She nodded approvingly.
“No doubt, then, my chief has told you that the best course to pursue
now will be to place the whole matter in the hands of the English
police. Our people at Scotland Yard will then immediately communicate
with the Sicilian authorities, and in the meanwhile we can keep the
two men in Leather Lane well under surveillance.”
“Yes, he told me all that,” said Mr. Shuttleworth, quietly.
“Well?”
“And I told him that his ‘communicating with the Sicilian police
authorities’ would result in my boy’s trial being summarily concluded,
in his being sent to the gallows, whilst every proof of his innocence
would be destroyed, or, at any rate, kept back until too late.”
“You are mad, Mr. Shuttleworth!” she ejaculated.
“Maybe I am,” he rejoined quietly. “You see, you do not know Sicily,
and I do. You do not know its many clubs and bands of assassins,
beside whom the so-called Russian Nihilists are simple, blundering
children. The Mafia, which is the parent of all such murderous
organisations, has members and agents in every town, village, and
hamlet in Italy, in every post-office and barracks, in every trade and
profession from the highest to the lowest in the land. The Sicilian
police force is infested with it, so are the Italian customs. I would
not trust either with what means my boy’s life and more to me.”
“But----”
“The police would suppress the evidence connected with the proofs
which I hold. At the frontier the coat, the watch and chain would
disappear; of that I am as convinced as that I am a living man----”
Lady Molly made no comment. She was meditating. That there was truth
in what the man said, no one could deny.
The few details which we had gleaned over here of the hurried
investigations, the summary commitment for trial of the accused, the
hasty dismissal of all evidence in his favour, proved that, at any
rate, the father’s anxiety was well founded.
“But, then, what in the world do you propose to
[IMAGE: images/img063.jpg
CAPTION: “‘Well,’ said Lady Molly, ‘… what is it that you
want us to do in the matter?’”]
do?” said Lady Molly after a while. “Do you want to take the proofs
over yourself to your boy’s advocate? Is that it?”
“No, that would be no good,” he replied simply. “I am known in Sicily.
I should be watched, probably murdered, too, and my death would not
benefit my boy.”
“But what then?”
“My boy’s uncle is chief officer of police at Cividale, on the
Austro-Italian frontier. I know that I can rely on his devotion. Mrs.
Tadworth, whose interest in my boy is almost equal to my own, and
whose connection with me cannot possibly be known out there, will take
the proofs of my boy’s innocence to him. He will know what to do and
how to reach my son’s advocate safely, which no one else could
guarantee to do.”
“Well,” said Lady Molly, “that being so, what is it that you want us
to do in the matter?”
“I want a lady’s help, miss--er--ma’am,” he replied, “someone who is
able, willing, strong, and, if possible, enthusiastic, to accompany
Mrs. Tadworth--perhaps in the capacity of a maid--just to avert the
usual suspicious glances thrown at a lady travelling alone. Also the
question of foreign languages comes in. The gentleman I saw at
Scotland Yard said that if you cared to go he would give you a
fortnight’s leave of absence.”
“Yes, I’ll go!” rejoined Lady Molly, simply.
2
We sat in the study a long while after that--Mr. Shuttleworth, Lady
Molly and I--discussing the plans of the exciting journey; for I, too,
as you will see, was destined to play my small part in this drama
which had the life or death of an innocent man for its _dénouement_.
I don’t think I need bore you with an account of our discussion; all,
I think, that will interest you is the plan of campaign we finally
decided upon.
There seemed to be no doubt that Mr. Shuttleworth had succeeded so far
in not arousing the suspicions of the Piattis. Therefore, that night,
when they were safely out of the way, Mr. Shuttleworth would once more
unearth the coat, and watch and chain, and then bury a coat quite
similar in colour and texture in that same hole in the ground; this
might perhaps serve to put the miscreants off their guard, if by any
chance one of them should busy himself again in the garden.
After that Mrs. Tadworth would hide about her the proofs of young
Shuttleworth’s innocence and join Lady Molly at our flat in Maida
Vale, where she would spend the night preparatory to the two ladies
leaving London for abroad, the following morning, by the 9.0 a.m.
train from Charing Cross _en route_ for Vienna, Budapest, and finally
Cividale.
But our scheme was even more comprehensive than that, and herein lay
my own little share in it, of which I will tell you presently.
The same evening at half-past nine Mrs. Tadworth arrived at the flat
with the coat, and watch and chain, which were to be placed in the
hands of Colonel Grassi, the chief police officer at Cividale.
I took a keen look at the lady, you may be sure of that. It was a
pretty little face enough, and she herself could not have been much
more than seven or eight and twenty, but to me the whole appearance
and manner of the woman suggested weakness of character, rather than
that devotion on which poor Mr. Shuttleworth so implicitly relied.
I suppose that it was on that account that I felt unaccountably
down-hearted and anxious when I bade farewell to my own dear lady--a
feeling in which she obviously did not share. Then I began to enact
the _rôle_ which had been assigned to me.
I dressed up in Mrs. Tadworth’s clothes--we were about the same
height--and putting on her hat and closely fitting veil, I set out for
Leather Lane. For as many hours as I could possibly contrive to keep
up the deception, I was to impersonate Mrs. Tadworth in her own house.
As I dare say you have guessed by now, that lady was not in affluent
circumstances, and the house in a small by-street off Leather Lane did
not boast of a staff of servants. In fact, Mrs. Tadworth did all the
domestic work herself, with the help of a charwoman for a couple of
hours in the mornings.
That charwoman had, in accordance with Lady Molly’s plan, been given a
week’s wages in lieu of notice. I--as Mrs. Tadworth--would be supposed
the next day to be confined to my room with a cold, and Emily--our own
little maid, a bright girl, who would go through fire and water for
Lady Molly or for me--would represent a new charwoman.
As soon as anything occurred to arouse my suspicions that our secret
had been discovered, I was to wire to Lady Molly at the various points
which she gave me.
Thus provided with an important and comprehensive part, I duly
installed myself at Bread Street, Leather Lane. Emily--who had been
told just enough of the story, and no more, to make her eager, excited
and satisfied--entered into the spirit of her _rôle_ as eagerly as I
did myself.
That first night was quite uneventful. The Piattis came home some time
after eleven and went straight up to their room.
Emily, looking as like a bedraggled charwoman as her trim figure would
allow, was in the hall the next morning when the two men started off
for breakfast. She told me afterwards that the younger one looked at
her very keenly, and asked her why the other servant had gone. Emily
replied with due and proper vagueness, whereupon the Sicilians said no
more and went out together.
That was a long and wearisome day which I spent cooped up in the tiny,
stuffy parlour, ceaselessly watching the tiny patch of ground at the
back, devoured with anxiety, following the travellers in my mind on
their way across Europe.
Towards midday one of the Piattis came home and presently strolled out
into the garden. Evidently the change of servants had aroused his
suspicions, for I could see him feeling about the earth with his spade
and looking up now and again towards the window of the parlour,
whereat I contrived to show him the form of a pseudo Mrs. Tadworth
moving about the room.
Mr. Shuttleworth and I were having supper in that same back parlour at
about nine o’clock on that memorable evening, when we suddenly heard
the front door being opened with a latchkey, and then very cautiously
shut again.
One of the two men had returned at an hour most unusual for their
otherwise very regular habits. The way, too, in which the door had
been opened and shut suggested a desire for secrecy and silence.
Instinctively I turned off the gas in the parlour, and with a quick
gesture pointed to the front room, the door of which stood open, and I
whispered hurriedly to Mr. Shuttleworth.
“Speak to him!”
Fortunately, the great aim which he had in view had rendered his
perceptions very keen.
He went into the front room, in which the gas, fortunately, was alight
at the time, and opening the door which gave thence on to the passage,
he said pleasantly:
“Oh, Mr. Piatti! is that you? Can I do anything for you?”
“Ah, yes! zank you,” replied the Sicilian, whose voice I could hear
was husky and unsteady, “if you would be so kind--I--I feel so
fainting and queer to-night--ze warm weazer, I zink. Would you--would
you be so kind to fetch me a little--er--ammoniac--er--sal volatile
you call it, I zink--from ze apothecary? I would go lie on my bed--if
you would be so kind----”
“Why, of course I will, Mr. Piatti,” said Mr. Shuttleworth, who
somehow got an intuition of what I wanted to do, and literally played
into my hands. “I’ll go at once.”
He went to get his hat from the rack in the hall whilst the Sicilian
murmured profuse “Zank you’s,” and then I heard the front door bang
to.
From where I was I could not see Piatti, but I imagined him standing
in the dimly-lighted passage listening to Mr. Shuttleworth’s
retreating footsteps.
Presently I heard him walking along towards the back door, and soon I
perceived something moving about in the little bit of ground beyond.
He had gone to get his spade. He meant to unearth the coat and the
watch and chain which, for some reason or another, he must have
thought were no longer safe in their original hiding-place. Had the
gang of murderers heard that the man who frequently visited their
landlady was the father of Cecil Shuttleworth over at Palermo?
At that moment I paused neither to speculate nor yet to plan. I ran
down to the kitchen, for I no longer wanted to watch Piatti. I knew
what he was doing.
I didn’t want to frighten Emily, and she had been made to understand
all along that she might have to leave the house with me again at any
time, at a moment’s notice; she and I had kept our small handbag ready
packed in the kitchen, whence we could reach the area steps quickly
and easily.
Now I quietly beckoned to her that the time had come. She took the bag
and followed me. Just as we shut the area gate behind us, we heard the
garden door violently slammed. Piatti had got the coat, and by now was
examining the pockets in order to find the watch and chain. Within the
next ten seconds he would realise that the coat which he held was not
the one which he had buried in the garden, and that the real proofs of
his guilt--or his complicity in the guilt of another--had disappeared.
We did not wait for those ten seconds, but flew down Bread Street, in
the direction of Leather Lane, where I knew Mr. Shuttleworth would be
on the lookout for me.
“Yes,” I said hurriedly, directly I spied him at the angle of the
street; “it’s all up. I am off to Budapest by the early Continental
to-morrow morning. I shall catch them at the Hungaria. See Emily
safely to the flat.”
Obviously there was no time to lose, and before either Mr.
Shuttleworth or Emily could make a remark I had left them standing,
and had quickly mixed my insignificant personality with the
passers-by.
I strolled down Leather Lane quite leisurely; you see, my face was
unknown to the Piattis. They had only seen dim outlines of me behind
very dirty window-panes.
I did not go to the flat. I knew Mr. Shuttleworth would take care of
Emily, so that night I slept at the Grand Hotel, Charing Cross,
leaving the next morning by the 9.0 a.m., having booked my berth on
the Orient Express as far as Budapest.
3
Well, you know the saying: It is easy to be wise after the event.
Of course, when I saw the older Piatti standing in the hall of the
Hotel Hungaria at Budapest I realised that I had been followed from
the moment that Emily and I ran out of the house at Bread Street. The
son had obviously kept me in view whilst I was still in London, and
the father had travelled across Europe, unperceived by me, in the same
train as myself, had seen me step into the fiacre at Budapest, and
heard me tell the smart coachman to drive to the Hungaria.
I made hasty arrangements for my room, and then asked if “Mrs. Carey,”
from London, was still at the hotel with her maid--for that was the
name under which Mrs. Tadworth was to travel--and was answered in the
affirmative. “Mrs. Carey” was even then supping in the dining-room,
whence the strains of beautiful Hungarian melodies played by Berkes’
inimitable band seemed to mock my anxiety.
“Mrs. Carey’s maid,” they told me, was having her meal in the
steward’s room.
I tried to prosecute my hasty inquiries as quietly as I could, but
Piatti’s eyes and sarcastic smile seemed to follow me everywhere,
whilst he went about calmly ordering his room and seeing to the
disposal of his luggage.
Almost every official at the Hungaria speaks English, and I had no
difficulty in finding my way to the steward’s room. To my chagrin Lady
Molly was not there. Someone told me that no doubt “Mrs. Carey’s maid”
had gone back to her mistress’s room, which they told me was No. 118
on the first floor.
A few precious moments were thus wasted whilst I ran back towards the
hall; you know the long, seemingly interminable, corridors and
passages of the Hungaria! Fortunately, in one of these I presently
beheld my dear lady walking towards me. At sight of her all my
anxieties seemed to fall from me like a discarded mantle.
She looked quite serene and placid, but with her own quick perception
she at once guessed what had brought me to Budapest.
“They have found out about the coat,” she said, quickly drawing me
aside into one of the smaller passages, which fortunately at the
moment was dark and deserted, “and, of course, he has followed
you----”